Range Rover

Photos: Stefan Baldauf

03rd November 2007

Feast your eyes on the most power­ful Range Rover ever! At first glance, this appears to be a normal example of the luxury SUV. But look closely at the rear, and you’ll see four exhausts sticking out beneath the bumper.

That’s because this prototype is powered by an all-new superchar­ged 5.0-litre V8 engine. The silver mach­ine was caught undergoing testing in Germany – and our spy photo­grapher was alerted by the quad exhausts. In standard supercharged 4.2-litre V8 form, the Range Rover features only two pipes.

Although details on the new unit are scarce, it’s estimated it will produce around 500bhp and 650Nm of torque. That should be enough to reduce the Range Rover’s 0-60mph sprint time by around half-a-second to 6.5 seconds, and increase the top speed by 10mph to 140mph. But buy­ers will have to pay for the enhan­ced performance, as the price is set to rise by £5,000 to £80,000.

The engine is likely to appear in the Range Rover Sport, too, and both models will go on sale in the middle of next year. Land Rover’s fellow Ford-owned brand, Jaguar, will also use the unit. It will feature in flagship R-badged versions of the new XF and the XK coupé. These cars will target BMW’s M5 and M6 respect­ively when they arrive late in 2008.

Social Bookmarks

• Email a Friend
• Print this