Range Rover Sport HSE Overfinch

 

Full overfinch body kit 22" Alloy wheels in gun metal grey, Sat Nav, cream leather interior. The new model is offered in three different engine options: a turbo diesel V6 and V8 engine and a supercharged V8 petrol engine.

What Jermey Clarkson say about this car. "It is a Range Rover Sport which, in essence, is Benidorm with windscreen wipers. If you were to crash a Cheshire wife-swapping party into a DFS Boxing Day sale you’d come out on the other side with something like this. It is ghastly. Very possibly the least cool car that money can buy.

And unlike the proper Range Rover, its quiet and dignified big brother, it doesn’t seem to have a point either. I mean, how can you have a Range Rover “Sport”. That’s like having a Tractor GTi. Or a Space Shuttle Diesel. And has anyone else noticed that from the back it’s also rather ugly.


Anyway, to make it that little bit worse the car you see here this morning has been painted in the sort of strident and vibrant shade of blue that simply doesn’t exist in nature. And inside it has beige carbon-fibre trim nailed to just about every flat surface. To make it that little bit heavier, I presume.

I simply cannot remember driving any car that provoked so much mirth from other road users. All the way round the M25 people were slowing down for a better look and all gave the same verdict. A resounding, open-mouthed thumbs down.

Imagine how that would feel if it were your car. How would it feel to drive along leaving a trail of hysteria in your wake. Pretty bad I should think.

And I haven’t got to the to body kit yet. This was so monumentally awful that the car, ghastly and uncool as it was, did its level best to shake it all off. I’m not joking. As a I drove along a whole chunk just fell away.

The boot lid broke, too. Of course you might think this would be no big deal, because the Range Rover Sport has two. But when one breaks the other won’t open either. So that was that. I had to tape it down with gaffer tape and that made people laugh even more. Driving along in a stupidly blue nasty car with the boot taped down and bits of the body kit missing? Jogging naked though a church service would be less humiliating.

The thing is, though, that because the boot lid wouldn’t shut properly I could hear clearly the noise coming from the four exhaust tailpipes. And it was extraordinary. Under hard acceleration it sounded like a lollipop stick rattling in the spokes of a bicycle, and then on the overrun it popped and banged like the big V8 was being spoon-fed with caviar through golden carburettors."

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