We’ve all had some version of this happen before: you’re watching a movie, like say Indiana Jones, and you can’t help but notice that Harrison Ford makes a fedora look really good. Or maybe you really liked the trenchcoats in The Matrix. It grabs your attention for the whole movie, and you ask your friend, or partner, or whomever you’re watching with: Do you think I could pull that off? They invariably say no, you couldn’t. The 2025 Range Rover Sport SV Edition Two feels kinda like the vehicular manifestation of that, rocking a lot of ridiculous style elements that you or I couldn’t pull off, but Harrison Ford can. Keanu Reeves can rock that trenchcoat.
Pulling off the look
This Range Rover Sport SV Edition Two is draped in matte Nebula Blue paint, with massive 23-inch wheels, hiding colossal carbon ceramic brakes, and almost every single piece of trim, from the grille, to the lower valence, to the hood and fender vents, to the exhaust tips, are covered in forged carbon. It’s ridiculous. On anything else, it would elicit eye rolls, sighs of cringe from trying too hard, but like Harrison Ford’s fedora or Prince’s frilly shirts, a Range Rover can rock it.
This sinister two-tone dark blue and black package is one of four themes available on this year’s Range Rover Sport SV, with the Edition Two part of its name simply denoting that it’s the second instalment of distinct colourways for this most ferocious of Rangies, following last year’s Edition One.
Substance behind the style
This isn’t all flash without flavour, there is some serious performance under that carbon hood to justify these outrageous duds. It has a 4.4-Litre, twin-turbocharged, mild hybrid V8 sourced from BMW’s X5M Competition, but massaged to make even more power – 626 horsepower and 566 foot-pounds of torque, to be exact. Mated to ZF’s genius 8-speed automatic, rest assured that straight-line performance is, in a word, adequate.
More impressive than its ability to teleport forward is its cornering capability; horsepower is what it is, but getting something this big to handle this well is witchcraft. A lot of that is chopped up to Land Rover’s new 6D Dynamics suspension system, which feels more like magic than mechanics.
Playing 6D Chess
Without getting too far into it, the crux of the whole setup is that the shock absorbers are cross-linked, with the front-right hydraulically tied to the left-rear, and ditto for front-left and right-rear. As one side unloads, the other side loads up, naturally. Acceleration lifts the nose, which sends that pressure to the rear, and eliminates squat; ditto for dive during braking. Hanging a hard left sees a lot of weight transfer off of the right side, and the hydraulic pressure from the rebound chambers in the right accumulates in the compression chambers on the left, and eliminates cornering lean.
Its principle is so simple that it almost seems like it should have been implemented years ago, but it’s fiendishly complex. However, it’s less finicky than the active stabilizer bars Land Rover used to use, and this 6D system is so effective at body control that they’ve been able to eliminate sway stabilizers altogether. By eliminating the physical rods linking the left and right sides of the vehicle, wheel articulation is greatly improved, all at once improving ride comfort, grip, agility, and as is traditional for a Range Rover, off-road capability. No need for an electronic sway bar disconnect here!
6D Dynamics works in tandem with Range Rover’s long-established air suspension system, as well as four-wheel steering, and it all coalesces into a truck that is capable of bewildering cornering ability, able to elicit more mechanical grip from its massive Michelin Pilot Sport A/S tires than a lot of sports cars can. More impressive than all of this wizardry is how it all comes together, because for all its supernatural handling prowess and dragon-breath performance, it still feels every bit like you would expect a Range Rover to.
Still a Rangie, just better
It’s quiet, save for the background baritone of the grumbling V8, made sweeter by BMW’s mild-hybrid know-how that deletes starter noise from the stop-start function. It is fabulously comfortable, with just a hair of sharpness over particularly rough pavement, but any unpleasant secondary forces you’d expect from the blingy rolling stock are missing. Throttle response is excellent, brakes feel terrific, shifts are slick, steering is glass smooth and communicative. It is a herculean feat of fine-tuning finesse that it does everything so superfluously, without feeling at all strange.
Inside is distinctly Range Rover too, even on this exuberant Edition Two. Everything is swathed in two-tone Ebony and White Cloud Windsor leather, with large expanses of satin-sheen forged carbon broken up by mirror-finish metallic trim. Along with the existing massage function of the wonderfully supportive seats is a new function for the seats called Body and Soul, which adds bass drivers directly into the seats, so they can thump along with the magnificent 30-speaker Meridian Signature sound system. It’s another feature that sounds gimmicky, like it shouldn’t work, but damn if it doesn’t pull it off and make an already top-tier listening experience that much better.
Wrap it up
Of course all this opulence will cost you a mightily pretty penny; about $221,900 for this one. The only SUV I’ve driven that would give me a moment’s pause is BMW’s Alpina XB7, but for those that want, or need, their vehicle to be a masterclass in tasteful maximalism, nothing else is on the level of this 2025 Range Rover Sport SV Edition Two. That it can be in and among the same league as the X5Ms or RSQ8s of the world without losing an ounce of what makes it a Range Rover, is a monument to Land Rover’s impeccable, uncanny sense of calibration, taste, and poise. So much of this should not work the way it does, but a Range Rover not only makes it work, but makes it rock.
