THE Range Rover Sport has come an awful long way since it was introduced as a fresh model to the line-up back in 2005. I remember being at the dealership I was working at, walking around one of the first cars off the transporter, gawping at the pumped-out wheelarches, aggressive perforated grille, cool multi-spoke 20-inch alloys and black badges of the supercharged model. The first-generation L320 was Land Rover’s first foray into a high-performance SUV – a tighter, tauter, more compact version of its full-size Range Rover stablemate that put pure luxury aside for a more involved drive and youthful image.
That memory is fresh in my mind as I walk up to the Firenze Red Sport you see here. First introduced in 2022, this third-generation car has really grown up – it’s a far cry from the squarer, more brutish debut model and is even sleeker than the second-gen L494 that enjoyed a near decade-long production run, boasting impressive sales figures. But, with the current Evoque having grown since its infancy and the introduction of Velar in 2018 to sit between the two,
