2008 Land Rover Range Rover Sport Reviews

Given the way so many four-wheel drives have morphed into performance SUVs over the years, it’s no surprise Range Rover had its own take on a high-spec, high-stepping wagon. The difference being, of course, that with a Range Rover badge, the end result needed to be sporty(-ish) and capable of plugging through the worst forest tracks and trails imaginable.The product of that thinking became the Range Rover Sport.Although the badging and high-end interior materials said Range Rover, the platform with its semi-monocoque construction said Land Rover. Land Rover Discovery 3, to be precise. But when you started to explore the Sport’s on- and off-road abilities and its tremendous looking body, any misgivings might have been scratched.The range kicked off in Australia in 2005 as the L320 series and included a huge range of mechanical packages. They started with the 2.7TDV6 which used a 2.7 litre turbo-diesel V6 with a six-speed automatic. With 140kW performance was okay, but importantly, the L320 used a proper two-speed transfer-case with permanent four-wheel drive.There was also a 4.4-litre petrol V8 option with 220kW and a storming 4.2-litre supercharged petrol V8 with no less than 287kW at its disposal. Both of those also had six-speed automatic transmissions and all V8 models had a locking rear differential for more off-road prowess.A year after the model’s launch, Range Rover added a 3.6-litre twin-turbo diesel V8 model with 200kW.The Range Rover badge decreed that luxury could not be forgotten, so every version of the Sport featured 18-inch alloy wheels, dual-zone climate control, cruise control, LED lighting and leather upholstery. The 4.4-litre V8 version added a CD stacker, bi-xenon headlights, and rear parking sensors, while the diesel V8 carried the same specification but with 19-inch alloys. The supercharged Sport added 20-inch wheels, Brembo brakes, front parking sensors, memory seats and mirrors as well as hydraulically controlled anti-roll suspension.Air suspension was a much hyped part of the Sport deal with the (on-paper) ability to make the independent suspension work as if the vehicle had solid axles in tougher off-road settings.Range Rover gave the L320 a facelift (to Series 2 spec) in 2009 with new engines and improved suspension as well as interior improvements to make the driver’s job easier.The new engines started with a 3.0-litre turbo-diesel V6, while the V8s were replaced by a 5.0-litre petrol V8. Available in either naturally aspirated or supercharged form, the new V8s were good for 276kW and a massive 375kW.The model was eventually replaced in 2013 by the L494 model Range Rover Sport. The short answer is yes, and no.The Range Rover Sport is a pretty amazing thing dynamically, able to combine high-speed stability with good comfort and even exceptional off-road abilities. That’s the ‘yes’ part.The ‘no’ comes in the form of a litany of serious mechanical and electrical problems that have surfaced over the years, tainting the Sport’s reputation.This car is a classic case of buyer beware, but if you do get lucky and find one that is reliable, the driving experience is hard to match. The problem is picking a good one, because the odds aren’t great that it will be clear sailing. In a nutshell, not great. In fact, not even close. Too many owners have had expensive, often catastrophic failures to make any other judgment. The problems are wide and varied, too, so there’s no short-cut to finding one that won’t necessarily break the bank.The rusted-on fans out there will beg to differ, but the facts are the facts, and this vehicle’s a gamble at best. This is no short list and the Range Rover Sport’s reputation for fragility and dud engineering is based on many years of turning motorists into mechanics.Let’s start with the real elephant in the room, the 2.7 and 3.0 litre V6 turbo-diesels. These have a pretty shocking record for destroying themselves due to problems with the bottom end bearings. Speculation is that the bearings themselves were either fitted incorrectly at the factory, or that they could wear and 'spin' in service. Either way, once you hear the warning noises from under the bonnet, you had a handful of seconds to pull off the road, shut the engine off and call a tow-truck. Any longer and you were likely to destroy the engine completely as the crankshaft failed due to the bearing problem.Symptoms that you have those precious seconds remaining include a knocking noise that gets louder as you load the engine, and a low oil pressure warning on the dashboard. Ignore it and you’ll soon have the con-rods on the ground under the car. Not nice.Scandalously, despite this being a known problem affecting the very earliest L320 cars, it took Land Rover until 2012 to sort a fix with a revised bearing design.Early examples of this engine also had a major design flaw in the oil pump assembly which was too weak to support the tensioner for the rubber timing belt that was mounted on the pump casing. This often showed up straight after a new timing belt was fitted and the added tension of the new belt exceeded the integrity of the pump casing.At that point, all hell boke loose as the timing belt jumped ship, allowing the pistons to collide with the valves and reducing the engine to scrap in milli-seconds. A revised pump casing design fixed things, but not before plenty of owners were replacing entire engines.The single turbocharger unit fitted to the 2.7-litre V6 was also prone to internal wear. Lots of white smoke from the exhaust was a sign that this was the case. Replacing the turbocharger unit was the usual fix. EGR valve failures on this engine are not unknown, either.The 5.0-litre supercharged V8 was not without problems and it often developed a rattle or ticking noise. This was usually traced to the timing chain tensioner, requiring the tensioner and the timing chain to be replaced. An improved design of the chain and tensioner helped, but didn’t arrive until the 2012 model.The Sport’s air suspension has also caused its share of grief with many owners returning to their vehicle to find it lying almost flat on the ground. The cause is usually the air suspension’s compressor system which can either fail to maintain the required ride height or simply allow all the air to escape the suspension units. One theory holds that the compressor itself was too small and was overworked, leading to failures.We’ve also heard of a few instances where the suspension units themselves have failed requiring costly replacement. But even the plastic plumbing for the air suspension seems underdone in the sense of a car designed for off-road work.Those are by no means the only faults associated with this make and model, but they’re the ones that keep surfacing over time. None of them are minor. Again, this is a long list because the Range Rover Sport has been far from immune from safety recalls to fix things that should never have gone wrong.Let’s start with the transmission which could sometimes refuse to select Park. This affected very early build L320s.Then there was the ABS sensor which could chafe its wiring on the wheel under extreme cornering and suspension travel situations. Again, this affected early (2005 and 2006) models.Perhaps the recall with the greatest potential for mayhem was one for V6 turbo-diesel vehicles built between mid-2004 and mid-2009. In those, there was a chance the vacuum system and the entire braking system could fail, leading to a total loss of brake performance. And again, that’s an awful lot of cars to be affected by such a serious defect.The L320 was also recalled at various points in time to correct faulty crank angle sensors that would stop the engine in its tracks, door latches that wouldn’t (latch) and fuel pumps that could fail prematurely.You can find out more by visiting https://www.vehiclerecalls.gov.au/ Later built cars were definitely better than earlier-build examples, purely because Range Rover had time to sort things out (not that it always did). But the one vehicle we’d avoid would be the turbo-diesel in any of its forms as these were the ones with the dicky bottom end. This is a vehicle where the fewer kilometres covered, the better. That said, you do see the odd one with better than 400,000km on board still getting around, but it would be very interesting to find out how much of a grandfather’s axe it is. Those high-milers are also almost always turbo-diesel cars, too, but that’s as much a function of the fact that this vehicle arrived in Australia when diesel was the new black, and people were flocking to it. It’s very difficult to recommend this make and model unless you’re an expert in diagnosing and fixing them and don’t mind a bit of down time. The non-supercharged petrol V8 stands a better chance of going the distance, but even it lives in the shadow of air suspension failures and other maladies. A high-mileage turbo-diesel can be had for comfortably less than $10,000 these days. In fact, you see them advertised for as little as $5000 which still makes them a punt, but a much lower-stakes punt.There’s a wide spread of prices after that with something like a supercharged V8 version with 100,000km showing for between $45,000 and $50,000. The one thing in the Sport’s favour as a long-term proposition is the magnificent repair and parts industry that has sprung up around the brand. You could argue that’s a function of necessity to keep a flawed product on the road, but it also reflects the fanaticism the Range Rover brand has created for itself.There’s a legion of specialist workshops that know these vehicles backwards and can supply pretty much every part needed. Independent specialists are also usually a lot cheaper than Range Rover dealership repairs and servicing.The better news is that every time a Range Rover Sport is pensioned off or scrapped its parts help keep other Rangies on the road. There’s no way of knowing how many L320 Range Rover Sports were sold during the model’s eight years on sale. But we can tell you that the bigger online sales sites have between 50 and 140 L320s available for sale.The vast majority of those are turbo-diesel V6 variants.

What I need is a time machine like Doctor Who's TARDIS, to cut travel times down to nothing.But while the TARDIS car doesn't exist, Land Rover does have the next best thing, which is a Range Rover Sport. This is a car “conceived”, to use marketing-speak, as a sports tourer. In other words, it is meant to achieve the diametrically opposed goals of being a sports car and a 4WD. In lieu of a TARDIS, that'll do.This has been tried many times before but, where others pretend, the Sport starts to succeed.This is because the car can be tailored to the terrain; the air suspension means it can sit low on the road to minimise body roll, yet raise ride height when off-road. It can change throttle response and gearshift points with terrain response.Around town the Sport is an auto diesel, so you don't get an instantaneous response, but it's nimble enough. The 11.6m turning circle is good, and if you drop the air suspension it's less than 1800mm tall, so car parks are no problem, especially with the great all-round visibility.Friends who own sports cars made rude remarks when they discovered the RRS weighs 2400kg, offers 140kw, is diesel and regally achieves a 0-100 time of 12.7 seconds.All-out acceleration does not leave the driver a gibbering mess, innards pulped by g-forces asthe car hurtles towards the horizon. The tyres begin to squeal at cornering speeds that a sports car would consider a warm-up.In short, on a racetrack the Sport would be left floundering well behind any ordinary sedan.But the Sport is not about track days. It is about real-world speed, when you need to be somewhere else, rather quickly.And when I am in that sort of situation, my preferred teleportation device would be a Sport or other quick 4WD, not some snarling sports mobile. For two extremely good reasons.First, not all roads are smooth, especially the ones I find myself on. For example, on the way home some maintenance workers have cut the bitumen to install a pipe, leaving a temporary gravel patch. In the Sport, I didn't even slow down and barely felt the bump.A sports car driver would have left a trail of plastic body parts all the way to the chiropractor. Rough roads? Again, the Sport simply wafts over seriously damaged roads, which would see road cars gingerly crawling in second. If we remain in the real world, at real speed limits, let's also assume you are going to drive quickly, but safely.As you arrive at a hairpin, standing on the excellent brakes, you glance sideways, and see that the apex and exit is indeed clear. Then you can attack the corner, secure in the knowledge that the suspension, tyres and all-wheel-drive will help deal with any mid-corner irregularities.In, say, the Lotus Elise, you glance sideways and get an excellent view of the tops of grass blades, with the local insects peering down at you.Whatever dangers the corner may hold will not be apparent until you're almost through it. Then you also quickly discover the road is not quite as smooth as it seemed from within the Sport, and that does nothing for confidence.And what if you're in a hurry and your back country short cut suddenly turns to dirt? In a Sport, you'd laugh. In a highly strung sporty car you'd cry. I've been with friends in this situation; we were overtaken by a farmer in a ute full of hay.Hence my contention that a quick 4WD is often quicker, real world, than a quick sports car.I might add that the Sport can be loaded with all my digital SLR kit and much more, whereas the Elise is chockers with a small digital camera.But enough about on road. By definition, every all-rounder is competent at lots of things. But they also tend to have a speciality, and for the RRS it's low-range work.There are other 4WDs that can match or exceed it for at-speed dynamics. But the only ones that can keep up with it in the rough would be blown away like confetti on the smooth stuff.For an indie suspension car, the Sport has long wheel travel with cross-linked height-adjustable air suspension. Translation; clearance is not a problem. It's manoeuvrable.Ample torque and, thanks to the tailored throttle response, you can request another quarter-Nm and it is delivered instantly, thank you, sir. Good traction control. The car just works off-road, and I now believe the Land Rover exec who told me it was better than the Defender.My litmus test is simple: with all-terrain tyres, would I hesitate to point the car's nose down any 4WD track in the wet? Not in the Sport.If the RRS is to be your personal transport, you'll be spending a lot of time at the wheel, and that's no bad place to be. But there are niggles.First, no external input into the CD player — but it is MP3 compatible. The dials are clear, but the rest of the dash is looking less than modern, and no sat-nav. You can't secure it on a hill as the park brake only locks the rear wheels. The auto can be slow to shift, so use the manual override. Another 100kW wouldn't go amiss, or more boot space.But all of this is like wandering into the Garden of Eden and noticing that the grass hasn't been cut in the past week. It's forgivable, in the big scheme of things, because the Sport has that most desirable of features: desirability.