Jamal Hameedi on the future of JLR Special Vehicle Operations

The 630PS (463kW) super SUV demonstrated Porsche-like dynamic focus with truly S-tier hardware and preparation, from the largest carbon wheels on a production car, to the largest carbon brakes on a production car, to the suspension that’s like a McLaren’s, only more sophisticated and capable, to the engine, to the calibration of the whole damn thing. It’s a properly serious car, from a division that wants to be taken seriously.

No longer the proprietor of barges and GTs as super brash as they are supercharged, it’s now all about a doubled-down depth of engineering and a focus on individual customer expression.

That’s not to say that the by-gone SVRs, SVAs and SVXs had any complaints from customers. Quite the opposite in fact. They sold like hotcakes and made JLR lots of money. But critically and objectively, while competent enough, they were never troubling equivalent Porsches in group tests, be they hot 911s or hot Cayennes. And the whole naming convention between different hot models was for some a bit confusing. 

So it must have been a point of pride that led SVO down this path of personal reinvention, of pulling itself up by the bootstraps, straightening up its tie and doing up its top button, right? To get a better understanding of what they’re up to, who better to talk to than JLR SVO head, Jamal Hameedi?

“It wasn’t so much a this is what we like and what we don’t like with the SVR,” Hameedi explained. “It’s more, we’re starting with the new Sport. How far could we take the branch if we throw all the technology we could dream of at it? That’s where we ended up.

“The end product is much more ‘Range Rover’ than the SVR was. It’s much more in line with the brand ethos and what a Range Rover Sport is trying to be. There’s being out of character in a shouty way and being out of character in a confident way. 

“To me, SV is simple. Before, we were basket case in our prior nomenclature between SVR, SVA Autobiography, SVA Dynamic, SVX. It was all over the map. Now, SV is the ultimate expression of the branch that you’re on.”

So how do you go about coming up with something like McLaren-shaming 6D Dynamics suspension, or the ‘Body and Soul’ seats that use your bones as amplifiers? Hameedi explains that it’s the result of SVO is doubling down on the skunkworks engineering and chasing hair-brained ideas.

“Our process is you cobble together a prototype, you make a Frankenstein vehicle and you look at the potential of technology. But first we ask what would blow a customer’s mind. That’s all in the digital realm. You get it to a point then you need a human event to say either this is absolutely mind-blowing, or the worst idea in the world, which is okay. We love to fail fast.

“When I first heard about the body and soul seat tech, I thought, that’s a gimmick, that’s stupid. Our customer doesn’t need or want that. It took sitting in the chair and using the technology. My brain couldn’t comprehend it. There’s some stuff that you can never communicate in words to a person. 

“On this car, we got almost all the ideas on the car. There are other cars where we have ideas but haven’t figured out how to do it. Sometimes you need to pivot or modify the idea.

On petrol vs electric-powered SVO products

Our tears are barely dry from the departure of the supercharged V8, but as the twin-turbo 4.4-litre BMW unit takes its place in the Range Rover Sport SV, we can’t help but wonder whether its own time is limited. Hameedi reassured us, petrol power has its place.

“I don’t think this is a last hurrah for combustion SV. There’s lots of projects in the future. They’ll be ICE and electrified. For me it’s not about choosing ICE or electrification. 

“To me electrification is a tool, to expand performance, luxury and capability. If you can use it as a tool to make a more extreme experience, then go for it. It’s not just electrify to electrify.”

On the possibility of a Defender SV

We can’t quite believe it but the new-generation Land Rover Defender has been on sale for four years now. In that time the line-up of different styles you can get your hands on has expanded and contracted, with the 110 and 130 models joining V8-engined hot rods, while the commercial options quietly faded away. 

But what about an SVO Defender? You only need to look at the popularity of the old Range Rover SVR and cars like the Mercedes-AMG G63 to know a big powerful Defender-shaped rival to the Merc would be an absolute printing press for JLR. It’s a variant I thought I’d see almost immediately but four years on, at the time of interviewing, we’d still heard or seen very little about anything of the sort.

As serendipity would have it, a couple of weeks after our trip to Portugal with Range Rover, a member of our team saw a very strange-looking camouflaged Defender while on a lunchtime walk around the circuit. It was wearing what looked like puffier arches, bead-locked wheels, chunky over-30-inch tyres and four very square, very aggressive exhausts.

Perhaps that explains why when we asked Hameedi whether we could expect an SVO-flavoured Defender any time soon, he was a little cagey. Even the little he did say pricked our ears and that Motor Circuit spot only confirmed for us that the conspicuous SV Defender-shaped hole in the market could soon be filled.

Perhaps that explains why when we asked Hameedi whether we could expect an SVO-flavoured Defender any time soon, he was a little cagey. Even the little he did say pricked our ears and that Motor Circuit spot only confirmed for us that the conspicuous SV Defender-shaped hole in the market could soon be filled.

“Well, I invented the Raptor, back in my Ford days,” Hameedi told us with a smile, referring to the bombastic, puffy-arched, knobbly-tyred, V8-engined, snub-nosed variant of the F-150 pickup truck that basically became an instant icon.

“So stuff like that floats around in my brain 24 hours a day. It’s been on the brain for a long long time,” he says with a smile. “Next question”.

So there you have it. Even as JLR’s SVO division pivots toward a more clean-cut, sophisticated identity, with skyrocketing technological and dynamic capability, that sense of humour and a love for theatrics isn’t going by the wayside. Loud petrol power is here to stay, at least in the short to medium term, while ‘extreme’ electrified SV-badged machines should also be on the way. 

For now, the Range Rover Sport SV has proven to be an astonishingly capable and exciting opening gambit for a reinvented and rejuvenated JLR SVO. Next up, Defender SV?