I first met the Range Rover Sport SV EDITION TWO at Range Rover House in Carmel during Monterey Car Week in August 2024. It was love at first sight. I mentioned then how little time with the car was needed to make you aspire to own one of the limited edition models.
Now in mid-October, I found myself waiting to be picked up by Land Rover in Southwest London after what has become a regular flight for me back to my home country of England from San Francisco.
It was not long before a Range Rover SV in “Sunrise Copper” appeared to take me to the Rectory Hotel in the Cotswolds to experience what Jaguar Land Rover’s SV (“Special Vehicle”) division does to amplify the core characteristics of their iconic vehicles and push the boundaries of what is possible from the brand that has become a symbol of British engineering, adventure, and luxury. Being chauffeured in the Range Rover SV gave me the ability to experience the quality of the interiors curated by SV, delivering comfort, technology, and tranquility.
Designed to feel like flying in first class, you really feel cocooned in the SV signature suite with the added luxury of numerous massage seat settings, including a hot stone massage that quickly allowed me to catch up on some of the sleep missed the night before.
While the Range Rover SV, with its most exclusive materials and finishes commonly seen in the worlds of luxury watches and jewelry, is putting up a good contest to be the most luxurious car on the market, that was not why I was here. I had traveled across the Atlantic Ocean to the home of Range Rover to experience the specially tuned 626-horsepower, twin-turbocharged, 4.4-liter V8 engine of Range Rover’s most powerful and fastest-ever vehicle: the Range Rover Sport SV EDITION TWO.
It quickly became clear how special this car is when Jamal Hameedi, director of Jaguar Land Rover’s Special Vehicles Operations (SVO) since 2018, explained how rare this Range Rover Sport is going to be and that it is unlikely that there will ever be a full lineup of them in one place again.
Jamal, who was previously Global Performance Chief Engineer during his 27-year career at Ford Motor Company and known as the Father of the F-150 Raptor, knows a thing or two about performance SUVs. On Michelin Pilot All-Season 4 tires the 0 to 60 miles per hour of the EDITION TWO is 3.6 seconds with a top speed of 180 mph.
A beautiful autumnal afternoon greeted me when we stepped onto the driveway of the Rectory to SV EDITION TWOs demonstrating four new design curations: the Blue Nebula, inspired by the Northern Atlantic coast; the Marl Grey Gloss with a gloss carbon twill exterior pack; a Sunrise Copper with satin carbon twill; and the final exclusive curation featuring a Ligurian Black gloss exterior with an exposed carbon fiber bonnet.
The gladly accepted mission was for each driver to test the limits of the English countryside’s highway code, taking each car from the Cotswolds west across the Severn Bridge and up to Eastnor Castle to assess the offroad capabilities on the tracks which have been used to test every Land Rover product ever made, before looping back in the autumnal darkness.
I’m not sure that the local farmers were expecting to see five SV EDITION TWO Range Rover sports roar by in SV mode down the A429 towards Cirencester, but for the drivers, these cars were in their element, eating mile after mile of A and B roads without any sign of slipping on the damp orange and yellow leaves.
The Body and Soul Seats (BASS) only enhance the connection between car and driver as the in-car sensory technology delivers a physical and immersive audio and well-being experience through the use of haptic transducer technology.
Despite feeling slightly uneasy taking such a beautiful and pristine car, with performance tires, around the Eastnor Castle tracks where Land Rovers are still pushed to their limits during testing to this day, each SV EDITION TWO took every wet and muddy obstacle with ease, utilizing the leading technology and superior design that have made Range Rover the luxury offroad icon that it is.
The mainly highway drive back to the Cotswolds was the perfect segment to experience the sheer comfort and quiet tranquility of the comfort drive mode coupled with my favorite hot stone massage mode. How will I live without this?
The final test of the well-rounded experience took place at the historic Prescott Speed Hill Climb in Gloucestershire. We were lucky enough to test the car’s track capabilities on one of only 30 days that this track is allowed to be driven on annually.
Despite the track being only 1,031 meters in length, this was enough to really feel the outstanding performance, comparable to much lighter sports cars, enabled by the aerodynamic enhancements of the carbon fiber bonnet and carbon ceramic brakes.
So, what did my 48 hours in the Range Rover Sport SV EDITION TWO teach me?
It’s fast—really fast—and sounds great. One of my biggest fears is the day we will no longer hear the distinctive sound of the V8 on our roads. It doesn’t crackle like the old SVR or F-Type but has a very powerful grunt.
Like the rest of the SV lineup, it’s luxurious, comparable to the titans of automotive luxury.
It’s practical yet stylish. You can easily do the school run, fill the boot full of Labrador retrievers, and scale some of the British countryside’s muddiest and harshest terrain before heading out to dinner in Knightsbridge where, no doubt, the valet will position it right out front.
This Range Rover, like many before it, is full of firsts which shows how far this brand has come, since it was the first car to be displayed at the Louvre, the first car to ever have ABS brakes in 1989, and the first to have electronic suspension in 1992, to name a few.
It’s now the first car to have this level of luxury and curation and which can compete on the track as well as scale mountains. What on earth will they think of next? A Land Rover Defender designed to tackle the Nürburgring?