Avg. Price Paid:$28,902 - $34,197
Original MSRP: $57,725 - $71,175
MPG: 12 City / 18 Hwy
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2008 Land Rover Range Rover Sport Review

Review Last Updated: 3/12/09

These scores and this review are from when the car was new.

Scorecard

Overall: 2008 Land Rover Range Rover Sport U.S. News Best Cars 7.6
Critics' Rating: 7.9
Performance: 8.2
Interior: 7.9
Safety: N/A
Reliability:
How we calculate scores
Research analyzed for this review

Pros & Cons

  • Good balance of on- and off-road performance
  • Distinguished and sporty exterior styling
  • Luxurious, roomy and gadget-packed cabin
  • Many active and passive safety features
  • Less cargo room than many competitors
  • Poor fuel economy, even for a large SUV
  • Comes with Land Rover's history of relatively poor reliability

Research Other Years

The Range Rover Sport delivers everything the Land Rover brand is known for, including spotty reliability.

According to our analysis, the 2008 Land Rover Range Rover Sport is a good-looking SUV that can handle any terrain and keep passengers comfortable in the backcountry and around the city. "The Range Rover Sport retains the superb off-road capability for which Land Rovers are legendary, but delivers on-road performance as good as or better than the luxury-utility competition," says New Car Test Drive. The interior of the Range Rover Sport is luxurious and full of quality materials and the latest technology, but in a highly competitive class, those features aren't enough to rank it above many others. In addition, cargo room is not particularly competitive, and fuel economy is downright poor, even for this class.

The Range Rover Sport comes in two trims -- HSE and Supercharged. Both feature V8 engines, with the Supercharged getting more horsepower and torque.

  • "[I]t is the Range Rover Sport's tenacious off-road capability (thank you, Terrain Response), its solid on-road performance, stylish looks, and handsome but no-nonsense interior that make it the ute that I would choose -- in Vesuvius Orange, please." -- Road and Track
  • "Certainly, the Range Rover Sport HSE is one of the most capable sport-utility vehicles, on the road or off, available anywhere." -- Washington Post
  • "We'd be more inclined to stop at the Jeep garage, were we in the market for a vehicle that truly could go off road and offer some good get-up-and-go. The difference in price, about $30,000 in terms of the base top-end model, would make the Jeep Grand Cherokee an attractive alternative." -- MarketWatch
  • "Expensive to buy and to run, the Sport looks like a million dollars from outside, but inferior fixtures and lackluster tech means that it feels a lot cheaper from the driver's seat." -- CNET

Next Steps: Land Rover Range Rover Sport