Range Rover Sport 3.0 SDV6 HSE Dynamic

What’s In Your perfect three-car garage? Let me guess. A Ferrari, a Porsche 911, and a Range Rover? Actually, I’m not guessing. That’s what you told us when we asked you in some recent reader research. So imagine how relevant and lucky I felt when I briefly had two of the cars from your dream garage parked in my real garage.

I’ve been writing about our used 997 for six months now. The Range Rover Sport has arrived partly to help cope with the second child we didn’t know we were having when I started the process of acquiring the Porsche, and partly to allow my colleagues to run the 911 for a while and give their views on it.

But mostly, the Range Rover is here because it makes a good story. You want to know what it’s like to live with, and this second-generation, lightweight, aluminium-bodied Sport is already selling in huge numbers and is central to Land Rover’s astonishing, export-led 9% growth in 2014. You like it; George Osborne loves it.

First task was to spec it: the great joy (and agony) of the new-car buying experience. Last time I drove a Sport, I took what I could get. It was the summer of 2013 and I was in Australia, taking an early prototype on an expedition to Lake Eyre in the middle of the Outback, to celebrate the half a century since Donald Campbell set his land-speed record there in Bluebird.

I loved the way that car ate up the vast Outback distances, and coped with the testing conditions, though we don't get much deep sand, fine dust and 40-degree heat in Sussex. I knew that my car wouldn't need much help to feel special. So I went for the entry V6 diesel: it’s also the most relevant choice as it’s easily the biggest seller, and hardly under-endowed at 292bhp (only 47bhp shy of the V8 diesel) and 442 lb ft of torque. The HSE Dynamic trim brings the more advanced, automatic Terrain Response 2 for idiot-proof off-roading (this will be tested) and the Dynamic Response and Torque Vectoring that make this big SUV handle with astonishing agility and composure.

It’s definitely worth the five-grand uplift over the base HSE spec, and still ten grand cheaper than the top Autobiography Dynamic trim. But I spent almost all the ‘saving’ adding the features I really wanted to try (or just wanted) including the vast, uninterrupted panoramic roof, the surround camera system, adaptive cruise with ‘queue assist’ and the admittedly tarty huge wheels.

Next, the colour. ‘Havana’ is a deep metallic brown that looks like matt charcoal until the sun hits it. It’s not as showy as those polychromatic paintjobs that were popular in the noughties, but like suede or a Weimaraner’s coat, it can be two shades at once. I’ve never seen a colour quite like it.

With black wheels, red calipers and a tan interior, it looked sensational (and accurate, as it turns out) on the online configurator. But uncertain of my styling chops, I sent the spec to Land Rover’s design chief Gerry McGovern. (This is not, I appreciate, an option open to most punters.) Gerry said he liked it, but that I should do something completely different, and spec it in the same Chile Red as the launch cars.

But you’ve seen that plenty before, so I ignored him and ordered it in Havana anyway. The editors of this magazine, with their horror of dark cars, will hate it. If it just looks black in the photographs, come round to mine for a better look. I think it’s sensational: not unlike the car it clothes.