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Gaydon, Warwickshire, — Land Rover’s Range Rover Sport has been crowned ‘SUV of the Year’ by BBC Top Gear at the magazine’s annual awards celebration hosted by Jeremy Clarkson.
On sale since May this year, the Range Rover Sport is enjoying a very successful start, with over 20,000 sales around the world and 11 awards to its name. This latest honour comes on the back of rigorous road tests and challenges set for the vehicle by the Top Gear team – from out-manoeuvring a high-performance military tank with laser-locking devices on the TV show, to conquering Dubai’s ‘Big Red’ sand dune in the magazine.
Top Gear editor, Michael Harvey, said: “The Supercharged 390bhp Range Rover Sport is the only choice for Top Gear magazine’s SUV of 2005. BMW and Porsche make world-beatingly-great sports cars, one or two of which look a bit like SUVs. Land Rover has only ever made great SUVs, one of which now goes a lot like a BMW or a Porsche.”
Jaguar and Land Rover chief engineer for vehicle integrity, Mike Cross, was also named a Top Gear ‘Man of the Year for 2005′ in the magazine, which goes on sale today. Michael Harvey said of Mike Cross: “Cross is as important to new Jaguars and Land Rovers as their design teams, and he has instigated a paradigm shift at Land Rover with the Discovery 3 and Range Rover Sport.”
Land Rover’s managing director, Matthew Taylor, said: “These accolades represent a fantastic endorsement of all the investment and hard work that is going into re-vitalising the Land Rover range, and from without question the world’s most influential group of motoring journalists, it is praise indeed. The Range Rover Sport is only our fifth model-line ever, and the first all-new addition to the Land Rover range since 1997, so is a very big deal to us and we are delighted to receive such significant recognition for it.”
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