Land Rover says it has set a new record at Pikes Peak for the quickest hill climb in a production sport-utility vehicle. Its 2014 Range Rover Sport ran the 12.42-mile course in 12 minutes and 35.61 seconds, with an average speed of 59.17 miles per hour. In fact, this also sets the new record for the quickest run in any production-standard vehicle, according to Land Rover.

The record was set by American driver Paul Dallenbach, who has won his division at the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb six times, along with winning the event outright three times. Naturally, since speed is important here, the Range Rover Sport used for this challenge featured the range-topping 510-horsepower, 5.0-liter supercharged V8 engine. And considering the fact that the climb encompasses 156 corners on its ascent from 9,390 to 14,110 feet above sea level – a climate where the air only contains 58 percent as much oxygen as it does at sea level – having all that forced-induction grunt was necessary.

"This is a hugely capable vehicle and I'm proud to have been part of demonstrating that by setting a new Pikes Peak record," Dallenbach said in a statement to Land Rover. While you wait for the promised video documentary of the record run to be produced, you can read the full details in the press release below.

The Empty Quarter of the Arabian peninsula is one of the harshest terrains on the planet. It's the second largest desert in the world, with temperatures regularly exceeding 122 degrees Fahrenheit. And that's just the landscape which Land Rover has conquered with the new Range Rover Sport.

Starting at Wadi Adda Wasir in Saudi Arabia, the Land Rover team set out across the vast desert and emerged at the border with the United Arab Emirates just in time for the Dubai Motor Show, which is currently under way. The 527-mile journey took 10 hours and 22 minutes, setting a new world record.

What makes the record all the more impressive is that it was undertaken in a showroom-stock vehicle, the Range Rover Sport modified only with a plate to protect the underbody from damage. Spanish driver Moi Torrallardona, who has challenged the Dakar Rally ten years running, drove the distance, propelling himself and Land Rover into the history books.

Land Rover promises a short film documenting the challenge to be released early next month, but in the meantime you can check out the images in the gallery above and the details in the press release below to see how it was done.

If you're in the market for a rugged and capable off-road SUV, the redesigned 2014 Range Rover Sport is quickly proving itself worthy of a second look. Although it may have gotten lost among the 22 SUVs vying for the Motor Trend SUV of the Year, the Range Rover Sport has followed up its Petersen's 4-Wheel & Off-Road 4x4 of the Year award with a similar honor, having just been named Four Wheeler magazine's Four Wheeler of the Year. The Land Rover beat out the 2014 Jeep Grand Cherokee EcoDiesel and 2014 Cherokee Trailhawk (in addition to the updated Toyota 4Runner Trail and Dodge Durango, among others.

To qualify as a contender for Four Wheeler of the Year, a new or updated SUV must be on sale before January 15, 2014 with a planned production run of more than 1,500 and an available two-speed transfer case. The five SUVs were tested for a full week before the Range Rover Sport broke Jeep's three-year stranglehold on the award, which won with the Wrangler for the last two years and with the Grand Cherokee in 2011.

Of all the tuners this side of AMG, none are as close to Mercedes-Benz as Brabus. After all, when Daimler needed a tuner to spruce up the Smart car, it was Brabus that it turned to. But Brabus tunes vehicles other than Mercedes – it just uses, let's call it, a pen name. It brands them Startech, like the widebody kit it's developed for the new Range Rover Sport and will present at the Geneva Motor Show next week.

The modifications center around the carbon fiber body panels Brabus (excuse us, Startech) has developed for the British sport-ute that give it over two inches of added width. The wider fender flares encompass 23-inch wheels that are forged, ceramic-coated, skinned with low-profile rubber and fitted to a lowered suspension. The front and rear bumpers have been redone in plastic and can be fitted with or without the wider fenders, and there's a three-piece roof spoiler at the back.

Startech is also offering an upgrade for the 3.0-liter twin-turbo-diesel V6 that squeezes out an extra 31 horsepower and 59 pound-feet of torque for a total of 323 hp and 501 lb-ft, dropping the 0-62 time from 7.2 seconds to 6.9. The German tuner also has a wide array of interior modifications on offer, details of which you can read about in the press release below and scope out in the high-resolution image gallery above.

Capable on-road and off, the Range Rover Sport may be a lot of things, but one thing it is not is stealthy. It's 16 feet long, after all. That doesn't mean that Land Rover can't try, though, and try it will with the reveal of the Stealth Pack at the upcoming Goodwood Festival of Speed.

Available on the HSE Dynamic and Autobiography Dynamic trims, the new Stealth Pack includes blacked-out grille, headlamps, foglamps, taillamps, hood and fender vents, mirror caps and tailgate trim. Even the 21- or available 22-inch wheels get a satin black finish with gloss black wheel nuts, all of which ought to complement just about any of the 18 available exterior colors in the catalog.

Otherwise the Range Rover Sport remains mechanically the same, right down to the 3.0-liter V6 or 5.0-liter supercharged V8 available in the United States (or the 4.4-liter V8 turbodiesel additionally offered overseas). While this specific package is assembled for European markets, Land Rover USA tells us that "some of the parts may be used in certain US packages" and that the company offers certain gloss black options in the US as well. Scope out the UK-spec press release below for details on the Euro-spec package.

High-performance SUVs are fast becoming big business for European automakers, from current offerings like the Porsche Cayenne Turbo S, BMW X5 M and Mercedes-Benz ML63 AMG to upcoming additions from the likes of Bentley, Lamborghini and Maserati. But Land Rover is not about to leave the action all to its competitors. To that end, it's been working on a more powerful, performance-focused version of the new Range Rover Sport, and now it's officially announced its debut.

Now confirmed for unveiling at the Goodwood Festival of Speed this weekend, the Range Rover Sport SVR is among the first products of the new Special Operations department at Jaguar Land Rover. It packs the same 5.0-liter supercharged V8 as the model on which it's based, but cranked up to the same 542 horsepower as Jaguar's top-level performance models – the F-Type R Coupe, XJR, XFR-S and XKR-S.

The vehicle will be shown at Lord March's estate in prototype guise, which means it's likely to keep the camouflage for the time being. But you can bet that underneath the disguised bodywork, you'd find more performance upgrades than just the engine to make the SVR "the fastest, most agile and most responsive Land Rover vehicle ever built."

Head on down below for the press release and behind-the-scenes video filmed at the Nürburgring for a closer look.

Nürburgring lap times, it should come as no surprise, have become the ultimate bragging rights for performance automakers. So much so, in fact, that the records have been categorized. The Porsche 956 has held the outright record at 6:11 since 1983, the Pagani Zonda R is the fastest production-based track car at 6:47, the Radical SR8 LM the fastest (albeit barely) street-legal vehicle at 6:48 and the Porsche 918 Spyder the fastest fully street-legal series production vehicle at 6:57. But beyond that, automakers have begun to stake their claims for individual vehicle types, like the Renaultsport Mégane 275 Trophy-R that set the record for the fastest front-drive hot hatch at 7:54.36 just last month. And now Land Rover has claimed the record for the fastest SUV ever to lap the Nordschleife.

The record-setting SUV, of course, is not a rough-and-tumble Defender or a stretched-out Range Rover L, but the brand's upcoming new performance flagship, the Range Rover Sport SVR. The vehicle was previewed recently at Goodwood where it showcased the might of JLR's ubiquitous 5.0-liter supercharged V8 in the same 542-horsepower spec as the Jaguar XFR-S Sportbrake we recently drove at the Nürburgring as well.

The Range Rover Sport SVR managed a hugely impressive lap time of 8 minutes 14 seconds, which puts it well ahead of the previous Range Rover Sport Supercharged that lapped the track in 8:55 back in 2009 and the Holden VF SS V Redline that claimed the record last year for the fastest utility vehicle at 8:19. Not bad for a vehicle with a 2.8-foot wading depth and a two-speed transfer case.

Of course with so many GT-Rs, Lambos and Porsche Turbos lapping the track, it couldn't claim the fastest AWD lap, but it is nearly three seconds faster than the Renaultsport Mégane R26.R that held the previous front-drive record before Renault and Seat started going at it earlier this year. And in the same spirit of competition, maybe we'll see Porsche bring its new Cayenne Turbo or Mercedes one of its AMG sport-utes to the Ring in an effort to take Land Rover's crown. After all, if we don't pay attention to this kind of irrelevant one-upmanship here in the blogosphere, who will? Scope out the footage and statement below, as well as the additional images we've uploaded to the gallery above.

Jaguar's AJ-V8 engine is many things to many cars. It may be old, sure – having been developed with Ford money back in the late 1990s – but it's also grown to be seriously powerful, with output rising from 240 horsepower in the original 3.2-liter version to 575 hp in its latest 5.0-liter supercharged form. It's rather ubiquitous, too, powering an assortment of Jaguar, Aston Martin, Ford, Lincoln and Land Rover models like the one you see here. And it's one of the sweetest-sounding engines on the market.

That latest AJ-V8-powered Land Rover is the Range Rover Sport SVR, presented in prototype form at the Goodwood Festival of Speed this past weekend. That's where Shmee150, one of the most popular automotive videographers on YouTube, caught a glimpse of it being uncrated and started up.

With 550 metric horsepower on tap, it's sure to give even the Porsche Cayenne Turbo S a run for its money – and really, there are few SUVs that can do that (at least until the Lamborghini Urus comes along, or Jeep decides to slot the new 707-horsepower Hellcat V8 into the Grand Cherokee SRT). Expect the first of JLR's SVR models to debut at Pebble Beach next month, but in the meantime, watch – and more importantly, listen – to the video below.

Let's face it – motorheads can't seem to get enough of races that pit cars versus planes. Well, at least that's what we're led to believe by looking at the sheer volume of the things on YouTube today. The real truth is that automakers with newly minted, fast vehicles – and big marketing budgets – love to see the drama of a land-bound car racing a seemingly insurmountable aircraft.

The thing is, we just don't see these races go down with SUVs all that often. But then again, not many are as quick as the 2014 Range Rover Sport. With the classically British Land Rover as one combatant, and the idyllic Goodwood as the venue, it seems perfectly fitting that the greatest of all British warplanes, the Spitfire, should rep for the sky-goers.

Exploding into action over a grassy runway, watch these two Brits battle to an utlra close finish in the video below.

Our spy photographers believe Land Rover may be hard at work on a new, higher performance version of the company's Range Rover Sport. The creation you see here was spotted hopping around the Nürburgring, complete with a reworked front fascia that boasts larger air inlets. Those intakes could be feeding a more potent driveline with more than the 510 horsepower found in lesser Sport models. This machine could be a more venomous Range Rover Sport R.

Of course, the standard 2014 Range Rover Sport is nothing to sneeze at. Engineers pulled a baffling 800 pounds from the SUV compared to the previous generation thanks to a complete aluminum substructure. Packing 510 horsepower from a supercharged 5.0-liter V8, the performance SUV should have no trouble getting up and hustling. Stay tuned for more details as they become available.

There's an old episode of Top Gear where Jeremy Clarkson describes the Stig as having a tattoo of his face... on his face. Some say that Land Rover has followed a similar theme for the camouflage on this Range Rover Sport, which features a number of images of other Range Rover Sports on it. Ignoring the wild camo on this Sport, though, these images provide us with yet another look at the even hotter version of the middle child of the Range Rover line, rumored to be called the Sport RS.

The biggest giveaways to this Range Rover's sportier pretenses are the quad exhausts integrated into the rear bumper and the gaping intakes in the front fascia (we suspect the Sport RS' fording ability is down, relative to the standard model). Eagle-eyed readers can also see the uprated brakes, complete with bright blue calipers. Under hood should sit the same 550-horsepower V8 found under the hoods of cars like the Jaguar XKR-S, XFR-S and F-Type R.

Now, it's still unclear as to where the hotter Range Rover Sport will debut. The 2014 New York Auto Show, which is just about three weeks away, seems a likely contender, considering that the standard Sport debuted there last year. That said, Land Rover enjoys very, very high demand in China, which makes the Beijing Motor Show at the end of April a strong possibility, as well. Regardless, we should hopefully expect to see this new Range Rover soon.

Land Rover’s high-performance Range Rover Sport has finally landed. The vehicle is the 2015 Range Rover Sport SVR, and it’s the first volume production model from Jaguar Land Rover’s new Special Vehicles Operations unit. As expected, the vehicle packs the supercharged 5.0-liter V-8 found in several models from Jaguar Land Rover, with its output in the special Range Rover Sport capped at 550 horsepower and 502 pound-feet of torque.

That’s considerably more (plus 40 hp and 41 lb-ft) than the output of the most powerful Range Rover Sport currently offered, allowing the new SVR model to accelerate to 60 mph from rest in just 4.5 seconds and hit speeds as high as 162 mph. It will also lap Germany’s notorious Nürburgring in just 8:14. We won’t call it the fastest production SUV at the ‘Ring just yet because there is no official time for the Porsche Macan Turbo, although there’s an 8:15 time floating about.

What makes the Range Rover Sport SVR potentially the fastest SUV on the planet is not only its powerful engine but also a host of upgrades to its chassis.

Starting with the vehicle’s eight-speed automatic, engineers reduced shift times by up to 50 percent through the implementation of rapid and precise fuel cut-offs during upshifts. The throttle is also automatically blipped during high-speed downshifts, smoothing the transition between ratios. During cornering, a special feature maintains the current gear through the turn to improve stability while also ensuring a keen response once the bend straightens and the driver can accelerate. The driver also has full manual control via paddle shifters located behind the steering wheel.

Drive remains to all four wheels, with the SVR-enhanced SUV sticking with a two-speed transfer case complete with a low-range option for demanding terrain, and a 50/50 percent torque split front-to-rear. Traction is maintained with the aid of an electronically controlled multi-plate clutch in the center differential, which distributes torque between the front and rear axles—up to 100 percent can be channeled to either axle in extreme conditions. The Range Rover Sport’s rear differential lock and torque vectoring systems have also been recalibrated for performance driving, helping to improve grip and reduce understeer.

In the handling department, engineers have added air suspension and magnetic dampers as standard. Movements are measured at least 500 times a second, with the damping force almost instantaneously adjusted in response to changing road-surface conditions and driver inputs. Compared to the regular Range Rover Sport, the SVR model’s air springs feature a modified piston profile, the damping harshness made stiffer, and the rear suspension subframe bushings upgraded by 20 percent. The active-roll systems have also been upgraded, with new actuators installed to keep body roll in check. Finally, the vehicle’s electronic power steering system has been adjusted so that there is a weightier feel. Incredibly, the vehicle’s off-road capabilities is said to have been maintained despite the performance upgrades. The standard wheels are 21 inches in diameter, and within these sit Brembo brakes.

In addition to its performance, there’s no mistaking the Range Rover Sport SVR visually as well. New bumpers are fitted at both ends with enlarged intakes at the front and a chunky, quad-exhaust system, wing spoiler and diffuser found at the rear. At the side of the vehicle, an all-new fender incorporates a distinctively designed vent, while unique side moldings add muscularity. A choice of seven colors is available, including the striking Estoril Blue shown in the photos, which is exclusive to the Range Rover Sport SVR.

Inside, Jaguar Land Rover’s Special Vehicle Operations has differentiated the SVR model with distinctive leather sports seats. They are finished in luxurious Oxford leather with ribbed, quilted centers and contrast stitching. As standard, the vehicle is supplied with turned aluminum interior trim details, with optional carbon fiber trim for the door panels, center console, dashboard and steering-wheel bezel available. Special SVR badging can also be found throughout.

The 2015 Land Rover Range Rover Sport SVR makes its world debut at the 2014 Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance this coming weekend. Sales commence this fall, with pricing set at $111,400 including a $925 destination charge.

You wouldn’t know it just from looking, but Land Rover displayed its most exciting model ever today at The Quail during the Monterrey Car Week.

Powered by a 5.0-liter supercharged V8 making 550 hp, the Range Rover Sport SVR isn’t your ordinary British luxury SUV (as if the term ordinary applies to them in the first place). Instead, it can run from 0-60 MPH in 4.5 seconds and makes a heck of a noise while doing it. The company claims a top speed of 162 MPH, putting it in line with the old BMW X5 M, but behind the Porsche Cayenne Turbo.

It uses an eight-speed ZF automatic transmission tuned specifically for this application that offers – according to Land Rover – gear changes in half the time of what a regular Range Rover Sport would take to move from, say, second to third gear. A two-speed transfer case is standard on the high-performance SUV and capable of directing 100 percent of the power to either axle if need be.

You can expect to spend $110,475 including delivery on one and for that price you also get a special cabin with sport seats in the front and rear. Carbon fiber inlays also help set the cabin apart. Despite lapping the Nurburgring in eight minutes and 14 seconds, which is quick enough to make some supercars start to sweat, it’s also meant to be able to perform other duties you would expect from a Land Rover product. For example, it comes with a wade-sensing feature that will let its driver know how deep a stream or pool of water is ahead of time.

Of course, you might want more appropriate tires for that sort of stuff because the SVR model also comes on 22-inch aluminum wheels wrapped in high-performance tires. While it might technically be off-road capable like other products from the brand, the two-stage active exhaust probably won’t leave you with any doubt that it is meant to be a performance machine living on pavement.