The next day, suitably refreshed and tutored in the value of momentum, I tried again. And got stuck again. What had still failed to penetrate the thick carapace that protects my brain from original thought is that all my off-roading to date had been done on very low-grip surfaces, where keeping the wheels turning as slowly as possible to minimise the risk of them spinning is everything. By total contrast, sand is an unbelievably high-grip surface and if you do anything less than charge like a central London BMW dealership, it will suck you into its grasp and never, ever let go. Not, at least until you've got the dratted spades and ladders out again.
But even I eventually got the hang of it. If you have to stop, you must be on a steep slope, ideally pointing downhill. Bring it to rest on the level and the only thing that can be guaranteed is that you'll be shovelling before it moves again. So you go over the edge of a dune, and use the combination of the downhill slope and all 385bhp to gather momentum as you plunge into its depths. Usually this involved going down a 40-degree hill which meant you hit the desert floor so hard that, on two occasions, I truly thought we'd crashed. Undeterred, you keep your foot nailed to the floor and proceed with wheels spinning and sand spraying while you pray you have enough speed to see you up the far side of the next dune.
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| Our writer basks in triumph at finally mastering off-road skill |
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Of course your refusal to do anything that might sacrifice any of your precious momentum means you often pop over the top lip of a dune with rather too much still in the bank. Then the Sport takes off, flies briefly through the air before crashing back down to earth or, more accurately, sand once more. But once I'd worked it out, the Sport never got stuck again and in five minutes we'd ploughed our way across more desert than we'd managed in two hours the day before.
I fear I wrecked that Range Rover Sport. By the time I gave it back to Land Rover after a several hundred-mile cross country dash to Marrakech, sand was still spilling from places I didn't even know existed - and that was just the sand on me. The Sport had sand in its doors, its CD player, its air vents - anywhere something as small a grain of Sahara could get. But this, at least, was pre-production car of a type that cannot be sold to the public so it was always headed for the crusher. Besides, it had done its job: along highways, up mountains and in one big desert, it had shown itself to be not just a capable cruiser, family car, driver's toy and fashion accessory: it is a proper Land Rover. And, to me, that's by far the most important thing of all.
