Land Rover Range Rover Sport [2013-2018] vs Mercedes-Benz M-Class

This Blue Whale you see in the pictures is the fastest Land Rover ever made. Few years back, the idea of having more than 200bhp in an SUV was laughable. But times change and how! This 2.4 tonne mammoth makes a mighty 542bhp and can sprint from nought to a hundred in sportscar rivalling 5.3 seconds. Let me introduce you to the Land Rover Range Rover Sport V8 Supercharged SVR(by the time you finish reading the long name the car might have already reached the moon). It is an SUV that is not only happy at being a comfortable cruiser but is also one of the fastest SUVs to lap the Nordschleife Nurburgring. The question is how have they done that? You already have the Sport supercharged version which, with 500bhp on tap is quick enough in a straight line. But it’s a tall car that shares its kerb weight, centre of gravity, and aerodynamic qualities with a Tata 407 commercial truck. Which is where the SVO men come in. SVO is the high performance division of Jaguar Land Rover. Just like AMG is for Mercedes and M is for BMW, SVO independently engineers, manufactures and customises JLR vehicles.

A fast car isn’t usually fast in Indian conditions. Supercars that have to crawl over speed breakers gingerly, aren’t the best companions in traffic and cannot be taken for holidays out on the highway simply because of the attention they garner. An option, then, is the super-SUV, which has the pace of a supercar but can deal easily with India’s potholes, speed breakers and have enough boot space and tank range to take out on a holiday. The ML63 AMG is one of this class, and it seems to be the vehicle one should choose if one wants to fly under the radar and get his performance high. Does it live up to the expectations that naturally occur when you have ‘AMG’ on it, though?

We take the 2013 Range Rover Sport for a quick spin first on an open runaway and then for some more through an extreme off-road trail to find out if the new one lives up to the expectations.