Please try not to be too alarmed and distressed by the extraordinarily vulgar
exterior of this car. It is much, much better than it looks.
It is a Range Rover Sport which, in essence, is Benidorm with windscreen
wipers. If you were to crash a Cheshire wife-swapping party into a DFS
Boxing Day sale you’d come out on the other side with something like this.
It is ghastly. Very possibly the least cool car that money can buy.
And unlike the proper Range Rover, its quiet and dignified big brother, it
doesn’t seem to have a point either. I mean, how can you have a Range Rover
“Sport”. That’s like having a Tractor GTi. Or a Space Shuttle Diesel. And
has anyone else noticed that from the back it’s also rather ugly.
Anyway, to make it that little bit worse the car you see here this morning has
been painted in the sort of strident and vibrant shade of blue that simply
doesn’t exist in nature. And inside it has beige carbon-fibre trim nailed to
just about every flat surface. To make it that little bit heavier, I
presume.
I simply cannot remember driving any car that provoked so much mirth from
other road users. All the way round the M25 people were slowing down for a
better look and all gave the same verdict. A resounding, open-mouthed thumbs
down.
Imagine how that would feel if it were your car. How would it feel to drive
along leaving a trail of hysteria in your wake. Pretty bad I should think.
And I haven’t got to the to body kit yet. This was so monumentally awful that
the car, ghastly and uncool as it was, did its level best to shake it all
off. I’m not joking. As a I drove along a whole chunk just fell away.
The boot lid broke, too. Of course you might think this would be no big deal,
because the Range Rover Sport has two. But when one breaks the other won’t
open either. So that was that. I had to tape it down with gaffer tape and
that made people laugh even more. Driving along in a stupidly blue nasty car
with the boot taped down and bits of the body kit missing? Jogging naked
though a church service would be less humiliating.
The thing is, though, that because the boot lid wouldn’t shut properly I could
hear clearly the noise coming from the four exhaust tailpipes.
And it was extraordinary. Under hard acceleration it sounded like a lollipop
stick rattling in the spokes of a bicycle, and then on the overrun it popped
and banged like the big V8 was being spoon-fed with caviar through golden
carburettors.
It was a beautiful sound, a wonderful sound. A sound to warm the cockle of
your follicles. So what, you might be wondering, was it doing coming from
the back of a Range Rover.
Well, this is no ordinary Range Rover. (You can say that again.) It is in fact
an Overfinch Range Rover and that, for those who know their off-roaders from
their onions, will elicit a quiet nod of approval.
Overfinch is a little known company that, for the past 31 years, has been
taking out the Range Rover’s V8 and replacing it with a Corvette’s 5.7.
That’s like replacing a lamb chop with a big old rump steak.
The result is dramatic. I once staged a drag race between an Overfinch Range
Rover and a 2 litre Ford Focus. And even though the Overfinch was towing a
Ford Focus on a trailer, it still managed to win. If I’d ever owned an old
Range Rover I’d have had it discreetly Overfinched; no question about it.
But then one day BMW bought Land Rover and replaced the old British Leyland V8
with a smooth, modern, clean 4.4 from its own parts bin. And that rather
knackered the Overfinch boys. Because replacing that with a big American
lump of pig iron would have been like replacing a Gordon Ramsay oyster
risotto with a Big Mac.
Then it got worse, because Land Rover was bought by Ford, who now fit the
Range Rover with a supercharged 4.2 litre V8 from Jaguar. And again we find
ourselves asking the question. Why replace this with a Corvette’s
wood-burning stove?
Why indeed? So what Overfinch does is keep the engine but fiddle about with
the peripheries. It increases the boost pressure of the supercharger,
changes the air filter so that the engine can breathe in more easily, and
fits a better exhaust system to aid breathing out. And then, inevitably, its
computer nerds set about the on-board ECU, remapping it completely.
The result is an extra 52bhp, bringing it up to 447bhp, and an extra 80 lb ft
of torque, bringing that up to 485 lb ft. It’s fast. Easily fast enough to
get away from the wave of hysteria that its body kit and paintwork have
provoked.
And it stops, too, because it’s fitted with six-piston cross-drilled discs at
the front and four-piston cross-drilled discs at the back.
For me, though, the biggest, and nicest surprise was the result of fitting
those gigantic 22in wheels and painted-on low-profile tyres. I saw them and
thought yes, very nice, but they are going to totally destroy every single
bone in my body. They don’t. The grip is improved, the steering feel is
improved but the ride comfort seems to be totally unaffected.
And now we get to the really good bit. You don’t have to have the paintwork —
which costs a whopping £6,995 — or the body kit. In fact the only reason
they were fitted to my test car is because Overfinch thought they might
stand out on television. Sorry, guys. There’s no way I’d film it. Partly
because no one’s TV could cope with the vividness, and partly because Top
Gear goes out before the watershed and that body kit would make children
cry.
Here’s the deal, then. If the man from Overfinch tries to sell you any form of
cosmetic alterations, just say no. The proper Range Rover cannot be improved
and the Sport is beyond redemption. Tell him that you only want him to work
on the engine, exhaust and brakes. To get what I had will cost £11,280 and
is worth every penny.
More than this, I kept thinking “hang on a minute”. The Range Rover has the
same basic engine as the new Jaguar XKR so presumably these modifications
will work on that too. They’d transform it.
Britain lacks really good tuning companies. Germany, Japan and especially
America are awash with people who’ll take your off-the-shelf car and convert
it into something really very much better. See the Roush Mustang for
details. Or the Brabus Mercedes SL.
In Britain, however, the art doesn’t really seem to have caught on. There are
boys with their hats on back to front painting their Citroëns turquoise and
that’s about it. Why? It is in our blood to tinker. We are nation of men in
sheds.
We are not, however, as Overfinch has proved with its work on the Sport, a
nation of artists. Style should be left to the Italians.
