Land Rover chose its company name to highlight its mission: Build vehicles capable of roving anywhere there's land. It has perhaps succeeded too well, as car shoppers in the increasingly urbanized parts of the world have tended to look for vehicles intended more for paved roads than unpaved tracks.
Those shoppers have found some competent vehicles, some of which are actually fun to drive. The BMW X5, the Cadillac SRX, the Infiniti FX, the Mercedes-Benz M-Class, and the Porsche Cayenne created a new market: SUV-proportion vehicles that are also sporty, with ride and handling abilities previously unheard of in off-road capable vehicles, and luxurious in trim and features, to boot.
Land Rover has hit this highly competitive, high-price market with two new products for 2006: The Range Rover Supercharged is a full-size Range Rover with the most powerful engine ever in a Land Rover. But it isn't really intended for flicking through a set of esses on a favorite two-lane road.
The 2006 Range Rover Sport has a similar name, but it's a different vehicle. Built on a smaller platform derived from the Land Rover LR3 but with a thoroughly reworked suspension and a unique but instantly recognizable body, the Sport is everything, well almost everything, the Range Rover Supercharged wants to be but isn't. Spirited, sporty, agile, with a snazzy look; OK, maybe not all that snazzy, but for a Range Rover, it's snazzy. It's also something the LR3 doesn't want to be: a Range Rover that's more comfortable on road than off.
Not only does it fit between the LR3 and the full-size Range Rover in terms of form and function, but it also nicely splits the different in price. It's priced about $20,000 under the top Range Rovers and $10,000-$20,000 over comparable LR3s. next page