Range Rover SV Coupe

Land Rover’s progress upmarket takes a gigantic leap

IF THERE’S A CEILING TO LAND ROVER’S AMBITION, WE HAVEN’T SEEN IT YET

IDEAS ABOVE ITS station? Hardly. That Land Rover is the world’s greatest SUV brand is beyond doubt. No one else has yet managed a luxury SUV with anything like the Range Rover’s effortless elegance. Look at Bentley, at Lamborghini, at the spyshots of Rolls-Royce’s imminent Cullinan – the challenge of delivering an SUV of aesthetic merit has already taken some big scalps.

Thus far, SVO’s output has eased the Range Rover to a list price of £170k. Factor in a fat typical options spend and suddenly the new SV Coupe’s £240,000 doesn’t look so much like a bolt from the blue.

‘Just’ 999 will be built. It rides on 23-inch wheels. There are only two doors (with frameless windows and power close). The engine is JLR’s supercharged V8, pushed to 557bhp for the fastest Land Rover yet; 165mph and 5.0sec to powerboat to 60mph.

Sharing only its lower tailgate and bonnet with a standard Range Rover, bespoke aluminium panels are combined with a modified Range Rover floorpan by a third-party supplier to create the bodies in white. At SVO, these will become finished cars in a labour-intensive process able to offer the quality of finish and scope for personalisation implicit at this price point.

Dynamically, the SV Coupe draws on the Range Rover SVAutobiography Dynamic for inspiration: fruitier exhausts, a lowered ride height and the quicker, more direct steering rack of the Range Rover Sport. Visually, the SV Coupe is an example of the same reductivist philosophy Gerry McGovern brought to bear on the Velar. Here, given the opportunity proffered by new body panels, the result is at once laudably restrained and a little disappointing. It’s very obviously a Range Rover, albeit one whose cerebrally manipulated proportions – the vast wheels, the falling roofline – successfully create the slingshot form McGovern wanted.

Inside there’s actual aluminium where you see aluminium and, of course, the scope to make your SV Coupe truly yours, from contrasting threads to initialled door handles. Indeed this personalisation process is central to the SV Coupe experience, with the car being offered to clients via a roadshow currently hopping between global centres of wealth, converting attendance to purchase with an 80 per cent hit rate.

If there’s a ceiling to Land Rover’s ambition and potential, we haven’t seen it yet.

NEED TO KNOW

What is it? A limited-edition £240k, twodoor Range Rover Key tech Power-close doors with frameless glass and a multitude of unique interior trim options Aimed at The extraordinarily wealthy In its sights Bentley’s Bentayga and the Lamborghini Urus