Car Reviews
2025 Range Rover Sport Dynamic SE – IF WANTING SOME MARKLE SPARKLE
2025 Range Rover Sport Dynamic SE
IF WANTING SOME MARKLE SPARKLE
Back in the day, as an automotive contributor to both the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and Dallas Observer, I was a regular invitee to automotive launches. In that process you jump on a plane, arrive at an attractive (often resort-like) destination, and when not wining and dining you do some driving of all-new models. Around 2005 I would have been invited to the launch of Range Rover’s newly introduced Range Rover Sport.
At the time, the Range Rover Sport wasn’t a radical departure from the Range Rover strategy, and owed as much to the larger Range Rover’s upright architecture as to its Discovery underpinnings. But the Sport’s smaller platform supplied some athleticism that the Queen’s Range Rover didn’t, and despite the 3rd-gen of the Sport – introduced in 2023 – weighing some 5,400 pounds(!), it is still the more athletic. In NFL terms the 1st-gen could have been a tight end, while the new one is a defensive end. (I’d supply a rugby analogy…if I had one.)
In the walk-up to the 2025 Range Rover Sport it’s hard not to spot the differences in this most recent iteration, although its styling is far from a wholesale rewrite. What had been angular is now softly organic; even with its rounded edges, the barndoor remains a barndoor. And while dimensionally it isn’t too far removed from the footprint of our Grand Cherokee, its three inches of greater girth is felt when parking at a strip center, or when attempting to share space with that Grand Cherokee on our drive.
The step into the Sport’s generous cabin is a step up, and like the Tacoma of a few months ago, the step up is made more difficult by the lack of a hand hold on the A-pillar and what impresses as a relatively low roofline. With that, you’re stepping up while watching your head. All of this would be moot if given a 34-inch inseam, but mine is 29 inches; or was at one time.
Once inside, the Range Rover Sport delivers relatively unrestricted, 360-degree visibility, plenty of head, leg and shoulder room, and one of the damndest infotainment displays currently offered. As I’ve often noted, if you’re an owner of a Range Rover Sport you’ll get the hang of it, but if not tech savvy get some indoctrination from your dealer (ask for the showroom ‘genius’) and the YouTube video. There are far too many steps to modify interior temps – really, to adjust anything – and given the target demographic (it is, after all, a $100K vehicle with options) you wonder what age group is spec’ing this thing.
Most of the above is forgiven once you light the candle. In the royal lineup you might think of Range Rover’s Sport as the Meghan Markle (Harry gets a Defender 130, while Helen Mirren can be seen in the full-on Range Rover Autobiography), but once behind the Sport’s turbocharged inline six (with the test SE’s 395 horsepower and 406 lb-ft of torque) you’ll think you’re Steve McQueen. This is by far the most fun I’ve had sitting in 5,400 pounds of anything. The powertrain’s effortless acceleration and sublime on-the-road performance shrinks the all-wheel drive, all-terrain platform to (at least subjectively) around 3,400 pounds. You can grab any lane, pass anything – and were it not for Waco, Dallas to Austin would be but two hours away.
If channeling Carroll Shelby and taking off for Terlingua, know that the Range Rover Sport remains capable of tackling the rough stuff. Its suspension clearance ranges from 8.5 inches (which would be typical for anything labeled ‘SUV’) to 11.1 inches, and it can reportedly ford a stream 35.4 inches deep. (One word of caution: If behind the wheel of a $100K Range Rover Sport and you discover the stream is 35.5 inches deep you’d best have insurance – and a sympathetic agent.)
All of the platform’s adaptability is made even better by Range Rover’s Terrain Response, which essentially does the dirty work when your RR Sport is getting dirty. It’s an amazingly capable system of interventions, and extremely helpful in both the wet and the wild.
With that, Harry’s Defender is more offroad-capable, Helen’s Range Rover is more luxurious, and the wagon-like Range Rover Velar is more accessible. But if bouncing around Montecito (just south of Santa Barbara, if you didn’t know) like Megan Markle, few things are better than the Range Rover Sport. You might consider it the Duchess of Success.
