The New Straight-Six, Mild Hybrid Range Rover Laughs At Discomfort

Jaguar Land Rover’s brand new inline-six engine has made it to the flagship Range Rover, and it all starts to make the Range Rover Sport look a little unnecessary.

The bum-cosseting full-fat Range has been pictured with the new Ingenium six-pot that was confirmed earlier this year. The new mild hybrid setup, which could permeate almost the entire JLR line-up, was given to the Range Rover Sport HST first, but official JLR figures suggest the larger, comfier model has the same 6.2-second 0-62mph sprint and an identical 140mph top speed.

As we’ve seen before, the 395bhp power unit is made up of a six-cylinder, 3.0-litre petrol engine and an electric motor that doubles as a generator and recoups decelerative energy into a 48v battery. In return, the battery can supply the motor with the juice it needs in order to help drive the car forward and reduce the load on the straight-six.

It also uses an electric supercharger that spins to 65,000rpm in half a second, which, Land Rover says, virtually eliminates turbo lag in combination with a mechanical twin-scroll turbocharger. Peak torque is 406lb ft and we can assume the six-cylinder Range will waft just fine, thank you very much.

The incredible natural balance of the inline-six engine will also aid the already impressive refinement that has long been a Range Rover staple. Likewise, the mild hybrid setup extends the functionality of the stop-start system, cutting the engine long before the car actually stops while maintaining full power to all other systems.

At 30.4mpg, official fuel economy is just 0.1mpg worse for the Range Rover than it is for the smaller Sport HST, which is arguably less comfortable and less impressive to your wealthy golf club friends. Given that no SUV is exactly our first choice for driving dynamics, we can’t help but think the new six-pot Range Rover is the one we’d have.

Small updates to the spec sheet include new features on the Matrix and Pixel LED systems. Sign Post Dimming can detect glare from road signs and deactivate the LEDs that are illuminating them, while the Pixel LED option now comes with a Tourist Mode, allowing drivers to switch the beam direction according to whether he or she is driving on the left or the right.