2016 Land Rover Range Rover Sport Td6 review – Roadshow

The Good With its air suspension, the 2016 Range Rover Sport delivers a very comfortable ride over long distances, while its available diesel engine is reasonably economical. Advanced offroad systems let this SUV go far off the beaten path.

The Bad The navigation system’s destination entry requires digging through too many menus. The dynamic driving program is not available with the diesel engine.

The Bottom Line The 2016 Range Rover Sport Td6 makes for an extraordinarily comfortable and capable SUV, while its diesel engine achieves much better fuel economy than its gasoline-equivalent, but don’t expect the most modern electronics or performance driving.

Scooting the 2016 Range Rover Sport Td6 over into a pocket on the side of a fire road to let other traffic squeeze by, the guy in the first truck says there’s a downed tree ahead that he couldn’t get under, so I’d probably have to turn around. The guy in the second truck asks after his dogs, the playful pack of black labs wearing radio tracking collars I passed coming up the road. I talk to him about the dogs for a bit, and he says they are tracking a bear.

Low enough to fit under this fallen tree, the Range Rover Sport makes its way up Cougar Mountain.

Wayne Cunningham/Roadshow

Welcome to the wilds of Idaho, one of our lesser-populated states that, however, has some of the best highways and Interstates in the country, not to mention big river canyons, lakes and heavily forested mountains. I’m in the middle of a 2,500-plus mile roadtrip, driving the new diesel-powered Range Rover Sport from San Francisco.

This well-packed fire road, running up Cougar Mountain near Coeur d’Alene, sees plenty of use, but trees fall frequently across its path. The locals probably scoffed at the upscale Range Rover Sport as they passed me, but I had no problem cruising under the fallen tree across the road. Further up, things got a little hairy as the rain increased and the road’s ruts deepened.

That’s when I engaged the Mud and Ruts setting on the Terrain Response System, letting the Range Rover Sport compensate for slip through a combination of locking differentials and automated braking system work. The air suspension lifted, keeping the chassis off the mud and the tires in contact with the track.

It was a moderate test of the Range Rover Sport’s abilities, and a chance to see some of the more impressive Idaho terrain, despite the reported presence of bears.

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Mileage groove

Getting to that mountain in Idaho required many miles driving through California and the sweeping, high desert of Nevada. When I hit Reno and fueled up, the Range Rover Sport’s mileage didn’t impress me as much as I had hoped. 25.6 mpg seemed low for this truck’s turbocharged 3.0-liter V6 diesel engine after 300 miles of Interstate-driving, a bit under the EPA’s estimated 28 mpg for highway driving.

Brothers under the hood, diesel proves economical for the long highway.

Wayne Cunningham/Roadshow

Throughout the trip I would find that this diesel was happiest with the 55 and 60 mph speed limits of Washington and Oregon, where its average economy reached a high of 27.6 mpg.

Searching for diesel in Reno proved easy enough, after I dug into the Automotive points-of-interest category in the Range Rover Sport’s navigation system. However, subsequent searches for specific place names proved so complicated that I resorted to my phone. Land Rover is on the verge of rolling out a new infotainment system for its vehicles, which will hopefully offer a better destination search interface. Even better would be support for Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, neither features being available in Land Rover’s current system.

With its 23.5-gallon tank, I was looking at just over 500 miles between fill-ups, which proved especially useful during the desolate drive through Nevada to Winnemucca, then up the lonely Highway 95 through Washington and into Idaho, where fueling stations were very few and far between. This stretch proved the comfort of the Range Rover Sport, as its air suspension mitigated the toll on my body and limited the need for rest stops.