- suv 80,496
- 14,998 high price
- Murray, UT
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- autoshopper.com
- suv 80,496 white automatic
2006 land rover range rover review this car review is specific to this model, not the actual vehicle for sale. All-new model good on-road, too. introductionland rover chose its company name to highlight its mission: build vehicles capable of roving anywhere there's land. It has perhaps succeeded too well, as car shoppers in the increasingly urbanized parts of the world have tended to look for vehicles intended more for paved roads than unpaved tracks. those shoppers have found some competent vehicles, some of which are actually fun to drive. The bmw x5, the cadillac srx, the infiniti fx, the mercedes-benz m-class, and the porsche cayenne created a new market: suv-proportion vehicles that are also sporty, with ride and handling abilities previously unheard of in off-road capable vehicles, and luxurious in trim and features, to boot. land rover has hit this highly competitive, high-price market with two new products for 2006: the range rover supercharged is a full-size range rover with the most powerful engine ever in a land rover. But it isn't really intended for flicking through a set of esses on a favorite two-lane road. the 2006 range rover sport has a similar name, but it's a different vehicle. Built on a smaller platform derived from the land rover lr3 but with a thoroughly reworked suspension and a unique but instantly recognizable body, the sport is everything, well almost everything, the range rover supercharged wants to be but isn't. Spirited, sporty, agile, with a snazzy look; ok, maybe not all that snazzy, but for a range rover, it's snazzy. It's also something the lr3 doesn't want to be: a range rover that's more comfortable on road than off. not only does it fit between the lr3 and the full-size range rover in terms of form and function, but it also nicely splits the different in price. It's priced about $20,000 under the top range rovers and $10,000-$20,000 over comparable lr3s. lineupland rover makes shopping for the all-new range rover sport easy. Just two versions are available, the hse 56,085) and the supercharged 69,085). The hse comes with a 300-horsepower, 4. 4-liter v8. Not surprisingly, the supercharged has a supercharged v8 displacing 4. 2 liters and making 390 horsepower. Both engines drive through a new-for-2006, six-speed commandshift automatic (that's also fitted in the top-of-the-line range rover). Optional is a rear differential lock 500). the marketing people at land rover didn't leave off much when outfitting and trimming the hse. To the extent there are differences, they are confined to dimensions and subtle styling cues. although nominally based on the land rover lr3 platform, the sport is smaller on the outside in all but width, and that by less than half an inch. Its wheelbase is shorter by more than five inches. The sport is more than two inches shorter than the lr3 in overall length. It's not as tall, by three inches. In one significant measure, it's identical to the lr3, and that is its track, the distance between the wheels from side to side, which is also less than an inch narrower than the taller and longer top-of-the-line range rover. appearance-wise, the sport so closely resembles the top-of-the-line range rover that it's like the disneyland version of main street: it looks just like the real one built to a slightly smaller scale. Only the most discerning and trained eye will notice that the hood, or bonnet, as they call it on the other side of the pond, is mostly flat, missing the full-size range rover's castellations, those longitudinal humps running along the top outer edges back from the headlights. Or that the windscreen and backlight are faster, or more raked. Or the presence of understated side skirts, front air dam and rear spoiler. Maybe the front quarter panels' side vents are more obvious, being closely patterned after the lr3's and in stark contrast to the range rover's vertical louvers. because, other than striking a slightly more rakish pose with its rounder, more tapered lines, the sport contains all the major styling elements of its full-size kin. The compound headlight clusters are indistinguishable. The grille finishes are alike, with the hse's a matte gray and the s/c's a bright metallic. The roof gets the marque's trademark floating look, achieved by blacking out the roof pillars. A similar character line runs the length of the body side, but with the door handles positioned beneath it to reinforce the sport's lower profile. Taillights repeat the larger range rover's stacked look, only not quite as tall and with the elements staggered from the vertical. And just like the full-size range rovers, the supercharged sport has chrome-tipped dual exhausts in place of the hse's bare, single exhaust. interiorwhile the range rover sport's exterior unabashedly mimics the top-of-the-line range rover's looks, the interior stays truer to its lr3 underpinnings. the dash top, instrument cluster and steering wheel are direct transplants from the lr3, right down to the stacks of cruise control buttons and redundant audio controls next to the thin, vertical, metallic horn buttons along each side the airbag cover in the steering wheel hub. Curiously for a serious off-road vehicle, the tachometer has no redline, leaving drivers dependent on the sport's computers to coordinate engine speed and gear selection with terrain idiosyncrasies. Although the center stack structure lays back at a more ergonomically friendly angle than the lr3's, the switches, knobs, buttons and display screens are the same as the lr3's, too, which while plentiful, are fairly easy to decipher. Infinitely adjustable, inboard arm rests in front ease long droning, interstate drives. The head restraints could be better, however. The positioning of the front-seat head restraints favors the back seat watchers. To ensure the best viewing experience, the head restraints, which double as housings for the video screens, are fixed in a vertical plane; in other words, they're adjustable only up or down and cannot be angled forward or backward. The way i like the driver's seat configure.
14,998 Murray, UTMurray, UT at autoshopper.com