Range Rover Sport Digs the Dirt

IF YOU GO TO REMOTE PARTS of the world for an off-road adventure, odds are good you'll do it in a Land Rover. Built in Great Britain, the first one debuted in 1948 and quickly became a revered military/emergency/allterrain vehicle.

In 1970, the first Range Rover was displayed in the Louvre Museum in Paris, and a British army general made headlines with his six-month trek from Alaska to Argentina in his Range Rover. Range Rovers first came to North America in 1987.

Todayís four models - LR2, LR3, Range Rover Sport and Range Rover - can be found valet parked at five-star restaurants and hotels across America. Which is a bit like using a SubZero refrigerator to keep your leftover takeout cold. The workhorse of the United Kingdom has become a status symbol in the United States. The base price of more than $57,950 for a Range Rover Sport hasn't hurt sales.

Land Rovers may be perfectly competent at freeway speed showing off luxury appointments, but I wanted to know what earned it iconic status off-road. Enter: the Land Rover Experience Driving School in Monterey, one of two such schools in America.

"The only time you want to brake going downhill is if the back end is coming around," says Travis, the driving instructor sitting next to me. "I know it's tough," he adds. "It's a leap of faith, but trust me. Take your foot off the brake."

Easy for him to say. Out the windshield of the supercharged Range Rover Sport is nothing but cypress tree branches and blue sky. The narrow road has fallen away to a steep cliff below our front tires. Sucking air, I straighten the steering wheel until the video display of the SUV's tires shows them lined up perfectly straight. I take my foot off the brake, and down we go - straight down. A deep rumbling comes up through the floorboards as the hill-descent control takes over, working in tandem with the all-terrain dynamic stability control, electronic engine management and electronically controlled locking front and rear-center differentials. We slowly navigate down the boulder-laden hill with our 390 horsepower and six-speed automatic transmission dynamically restrained.

"Good job!" exclaims Travis. "Now let's get some tires in the air."

No, he did not say "air in the tires." We're headed for an even bigger challenge.

"This is where you're going to tip sideways," says Travis, matter-of-factly. "And when you tilt, remember, you've got a tree on the left." My heart is racing as I drop down into first gear and drive into a steeply banked left turn. The bark of a cypress tree brushes by my mirror as we skirt the boulders on the right and head downhill again over 3-foot-deep ruts that raise one tire at a time high above the ground.

Take the Range Rover where it longs to go - because Land Rovers dig dirt. I survived.

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