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| Supercharged Range Sport summons 385bhp from its V8 |
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I thought I knew a bit about off-roading. Done a fair bit in my time, taken a couple of courses and been on off-road treks in locations as diverse as Scotland and Cyprus. But thanks to this all-new Range Rover Sport I have realised I actually know almost nothing about off-roading. But by far the most significant fact I do possess on the subject is that I am absolutely, especially bad at it.
Until last week, off-roading to me was a forest track, a muddy bog, or a specially created course, designed by a car manufacturer to make their 4x4 look good. I was wrong. Now I know proper off-roading and it is, by turns, one of the most exhilarating, rewarding and just plain frightening things you can do in a car. For I have taken this new Range Rover Sport, and driven it deep into the Sahara.
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| Mars-esque red-dust scenes |
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There is nothing more likely to make you feel insignificant than to drive to edge of the world's largest wilderness and look out upon several million square miles of endlessly shifting sands. This desert is larger than Europe and we were going to go and play in it, armed with no more than a completely standard, albeit supercharged, Range Rover Sport. It didn't even have special tyres on it. If it went wrong, all hope lay with a team of Land Rover experts in a Defender laden with spades, sand ladders, special airbags to inflate under a beached car and a very powerful winch.
This was some undertaking, not least because I was lucky enough to be the first journalist to drive the car. If it went wrong, the first the world would hear about this, only Land Rover's fifth all-new model line since its birth in 1948, was how it had failed to pass the most important test of any Land Rover: off-road ability.
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