RANGE ROVER SPORT SVR

Specifications

The sound of a Range Rover Sport SVR, at first, it sounds like a distant Chinook helicopter, all low and rumbly and full of trouble. When it really gets going you might mistake it for a passing NASCAR. For an SUV, it’s fantastic, and utterly riotous. So let’s go inside Range Rover’s acoustic bunker, known properly as the NVH department, to see how they make this thing sound so good.

NVH is industry-speak for noise, vibration and harshness, and people in this line of work devote much of their lives to making car cabins hushed and peaceful places in which to be. But occasionally they’re asked to go full Spinal Tap, and create a rock ’n’ roll sound worthy of the fastest Range Rover ever built.

The recordings taken here allow engineers to analyse exactly what sounds are being created at various speeds and under proper engine loads, then determine how they might be tweaked or improved.

And that’s the thing: despite all the legislation controlling noise and emissions, and despite social pressures in a world of fashionably-quiet electric cars, the SVR team has made a machine that could terrify your gran.