Range Rover Sport D350 Autobiography - long-term review

I had planned to take the Range Sport to the annual ‘Simply Land Rover’ celebration at the National Motor Museum in Beaulieu. Until our five-year-old daughter piped up one mealtime to ask if she could go to “a monster truck show” – and having initially fobbed her off, it soon became clear she wasn’t going to drop her out-of-the-blue and utterly random request. So, by the time you read this we’ll have spent a weekend, in Cardiff, seeing Monster Jam…

Where though, to find a bunch of Land Rover and Range Rover owners for the piece I’d promised deputy editor Ollie Kew? Why, when they turn up at your house and stay for the weekend of course.

Enter a Range Rover Evoque and a Land Rover Defender, the former soon coming to the end of its five-year lease and the latter newly purchased. Moreover, the owners of each, between us juggling our half-a-dozen five-and-under ‘delights’ for the weekend, were able to offer proper insight in the world of Land Rover and Range Rover ownership.

With the Evoque, having initially leased for three years, the owners (my brother- and sister-in-law) extended it another two to overcome the lack of vehicle supply as we came out of the Covid pandemic. They saw their monthly cost drop with that extension, but at the same time, the insurance to live with an Evoque in London has gone up and up, to the point of now costing more than the car each year.

Still, they’re going to stick with the brand, and move up in size to a Velar, as both parents stand over six foot and they often have a roof box on too. As an aside though, both the Disco Sport and Discovery just weren’t on their radar, showing how much work JLR has to do with that ‘brand’.

With the Defender, a solo pillar in the JLR ‘House of Brands’, it has replaced a first-generation Evoque, again to accommodate a growing family. It’s the wife-to-be’s car and she re-specced it after her fiancé got carried away on the configurator and presented her with a macho monstrosity sporting a snorkel, ladder, roof rack and those silly side panniers. He coincidentally, has a Mk2 Range Rover Sport, and has had it stolen twice over the years, highlighting the security issues with older-model Range Rovers. Both are smitten with the Defender though, especially regarding how much more practical the boot is.

And there you have it, genuine real-life consumer insight – and all I had to do was run the dishwasher three times a day and wash six extra sets of bedding at the end of an exhausting weekend I never want to repeat.