Photography by Lucas Scarfone and Coleman Molnar.
The roads that criss-cross the Ontario corner known as Niagara-on-the-Lake connect vineyards, orchards and farm fields with wineries, antique shops, bakeries and cafés. From inside the Range Rover Sport SV Bespoke, it all feels suitably genteel.
We’ve got the windows down letting in warm autumn air, the panoramic roof open and music playing. The cabin is about as peaceful a place as you could ask to watch wine country roll past… until you put your foot down.
How far is really a choose-your-own-adventure proposition. Bespoke, if you will. Ease onto the pedal and the Range Rover gathers speed like it’s being tipped downhill. Give the 626-horsepower twin turbo V8 a more meaningful poke and the experience changes altogether.
On one empty stretch of back road, I chose the latter. The nose rose as though the big SUV were coming up on plane. In a field beside me, a farm worker looked up. “Sorry,” I offered through the open window as I shattered his serenity. He grinned.
The SV sits at the top of the Range Rover Sport lineup, and on paper its numbers are fairly outrageous: 626 horsepower, 553 lb-ft of torque and a zero-to-100 km/h sprint of 3.8 seconds. I know this last part to be true. Not because I did it. Because my brother (riding shotgun) didn’t believe me when I said it, so I had him look it up himself. Consider the fact checked.
It’s also the first Range Rover Sport to be offered through the company’s SV Bespoke commissioning service, which opens up a palette of as many as 230 exterior colours, along with a much wider catalogue of finishes and materials.
Our car is a one-of-one commission called Nocturne, something the illuminated door sill makes clear every time you climb aboard. It’s a small detail, but a useful reminder that this particular Range Rover has been pushed even further into the realm of personal luxury.
Which makes Niagara a pretty good place to spend a couple days with it.
There are plenty of ways to do wine country here. Ours started with no real itinerary beyond a loose collection of places we’d deemed worth showing off to a visiting relative, all near our Niagara home.
My brother and I are both big guys. He’s about six-foot-five and 200 pounds, and I’m even larger, so the first test was less glamorous than anything involving horsepower. Could we actually spend the day in it comfortably? Yes. Easily.
There’s space to stretch out, and before long we were taking turns fiddling with the seat massage settings while passing DJ honours back and forth. The rest of the technology mostly stayed in the background until we needed it. The multiple camera views became useful pulling into tighter spaces and nosing around parking lots, and the drive modes gave the car multiple personalities. Comfort was where we spent most of the day, with the SV setting saved for experimentation on the brief stretches of road that invited it.
The first proper stop was Vineland Estates Winery, tucked against the Niagara Escarpment west of Niagara-on-the-Lake. Its wine shop is set in a restored log barn dating to the 1870s. Inside, the old structure now houses the tasting bar and shop, with local products mixed in among the bottles. The estate itself covers 100 acres and is especially known for Riesling and Cabernet Franc. And its view.
This makes it an excellent place to park a Range Rover. The Nocturne looked as at home against the backdrop of old timber and vines as it did on a highway. But the whole Bespoke exercise makes a lot of sense here.
From there, we headed east. And for me, Niagara’s appeal has always been in the things scattered between the headline stops. Lakeshore Antiques & Treasures is just that kind of place. The shop occupies more than 6,000 square feet and pulls together dozens of dealers selling everything from furniture and china to jewellery, clothing and odd old objects that demand you carry them around for five minutes before deciding you absolutely do not need a buffalo fur coat. We parked the SV outside and disappeared in the clutter for a while.
Turns out there is something pleasingly ridiculous about stepping out of a bespoke Range Rover to rummage through old glassware and costume jewellery, looking for the one silver or gold bangle overlooked by the seller. One is about making something exactly how you want it while the other is about finding the thing nobody else thought to keep. Both immensely satisfying in their own ways.
Our next stop is Pie Plate in Virgil, known by locals as one of the best places to get a bite and a coffee. Quick lattes and something sweet, and then back to the car. All of a sudden, we’re running errands.
But the SV does this kind of day particularly well because there’s no ceremony required around it. You can arrive somewhere fancy and it looks at home. Or you can also park it outside a bakery with crumbs on your shirt, a baby under your arm, and a coffee in the cupholder and it still works.
Another drive along the Niagara River Parkway brought us to Walker’s Country Market, a family-run roadside market with roots in the area going back to the 1930s. Depending on the season, its own farm-grown produce includes peaches, cherries, plums, nectarines, apples and grapes, alongside other Niagara fruit and vegetables.
We picked up some corn and apples for home and loaded them into the back.
By this point, the day had settled into its own rhythm. We had driven hard enough to understand what the SV badge means, but most of the kilometres had been spent doing ordinary things like talking and cruising, listening to music, buying food, poking through antiques and stopping wherever looked interesting.
There is no shortage of extraordinarily fast SUVs, and the SV’s performance figures mean the Range Rover has a place among them. But speed wasn’t what I’ll remember most about it.
What stuck with me instead was how easily it shifted between whatever we threw at it, acting as a quiet place to catch up with family, a ridiculously comfortable errand runner, a soundtrack on wheels, and a very fast way to pick up apples for a cobbler all in the span of 48 hours.
And that may be as insightful a comment on Range Rover’s Bespoke program as you’re going to get here: two demanding people kept changing the plan as they went and the vehicle never seemed wrong for what came next.
The 2026 Range Rover Sport SV starts at $159,500 CAD, before freight, taxes and fees. The SV Bespoke program is available to Canadian customers, offering an extensive range of personalized finishes, materials and details. Pricing for individual commissions, including the Nocturne specification featured here, is available through Range Rover’s SV Bespoke specialists. Visit rangerover.com for more.
