The 10 best fast SUVs for 2025
The idea of a fast SUV may not make much sense to all. A big four-wheel-drive SUV with knobbly tyres, huge ground clearance and weighty kit like low-range gearboxes and locking differentials is not the ideal base to make a fast road car. At least, it shouldn’t be.
But modern technology – and the sheer power available from the latest engine tech – means you can have your cake and eat it. You can have an SUV capable of handling the rough stuff while humbling hot hatches on road. What’s not to like about a fast, big, tough and practical SUV? Exactly. Who cares about fuel costs, these are the ten best fast SUVs you can buy today.
2025 Land Rover Defender 110 OCTA
The Land Rover Defender 110 OCTA gets its name from the eight sides of a diamond – giving you an idea of what this SUV is all about, because diamond is the toughest mineral on earth. But before we get to that, we should tell you about the engine lurking behind the OCTA’s beefy body kit and enormous wheel arches – it’s a twin-turbocharged BMW V8 producing 635PS (467kW), making this gigantic off-roader good for 0-62mph in just 3.8 seconds.
And it can do that on almost any terrain. The OCTA borrows its fancy air suspension from the Range Rover Sport SVR, so as well as have vice-tight body control on road, it’s also excellent off it because there are no anti-roll bars to hamper wheel articulation. OCTA mode, meanwhile, sends 80 per cent of the car’s power to the back wheels, softens the suspension but keeps the damping firm – turning the 110 into a Dakar Rally car you can drive on road.
2022 Porsche Cayenne Turbo GT
The most mental Cayenne there has ever been is easily the best Cayenne we've ever driven. It has an incredible 4.0-liter twin-turbocharged V8 engine pumping out 640PS (471kW) through all four wheels while 850Nm (629lb ft) of torque attempts to shred all its rubber.
Despite its size and weight it'll still hit 62mph in 3.3 seconds and it feels like it can do things it absolutely shouldn't be able to.
2024 Aston Martin DBX707
Because on top of having a better badge, its fettled diff, deftly-judged suspension and hot-rod AMG V8, make the DBX707 not just a great performance SUV, but a great performance car full stop. With its bespoke platform and in-detail engineering, it's the opposite of the kind of margin-centric synical badge job we've seen from other esteemed supercar marques, too.
Performance doesn't come at the expense of road suitability either. It's a genuinely lovely, special-feeling, high-quality place to spend time and will easily munch miles the way any Aston should. OK, the in-car UI isn't great but it's far superior to the sportscar range and when you get on it, drives like a proper member of the family too. The Ferrari Purosangue really has to be good to not only beat this, but be worth over £100,000 more. Yes, it can be quite gaudy with those lurid AMR highlights but get the spec right and it's actually not a bad-looking old bus.
2024 Range Rover Sport SV
A pretender to the Porsche Cayenne’s high-performance SUV throne is the Range Rover Sport SV and by all accounts, this thing has landed an absolute haymaker. Underneath the blistered, punctured skin it combines a 635PS (467kW) BMW M-sourced twin-turbo V8 engine with its 6D dynamics hydraulically-linked suspension and carbon ceramic brakes. Those brakes we’ll add, are the largest carbons on a production car.
Round a track, this thing could honestly duff up most fast estates, with superb balance, sharp steering and rocksteady body control. It’s still unbelievable that all that is in reference to a Range Rover but the RRS SV is genuinely one of the best. Whether you buy one over the also excellent Aston Martin DBX707 for the same money is your prerogative…
2024 Lamborghini Urus Performante
Devilishly fast is the updated Lamborghini Urus Performante. With its 666PS (490kW), it set an SUV record at Pikes Peak, with a toime of 10:32, beating out the Bentley Bentayga by a healthy 17 seconds.
The Performante also gets the option of extra carbon bits, Aventador SVJ-inspired wheels, updated aero and reduced weight. Doesn't always sound like we're talking about an SUV, does it? That's the job of the Urus: to be a supercar on stilts.
2024 Alfa Romeo Stelvio Quadrifoglio
The Stelvio Quadrifoglio has been around a while but had a refresh in 2024. We love this Italian beast – a sonorous exhaust boom and crackle echo the workings of the incredible Ferrari-derived engine, but that’s only half the tale of any Maranello engine – it’s the character and sound that we’ve fallen in love with.
A proper driver’s SUV, and you can’t say that very often. Somehow the 1,800kg Stelvio manages to make itself feel like a hot hatch the moment you attack a corner.
2024 Mercedes-AMG G63
Bonkers, in a most excellent way and it remains. An update to the Mercedes-AMG G63 in 2024 added fancier active suspension and 48-volt mild hybridity to the bombastic 585PS (430kW) V8.
The boxy styling says mud-chugging agricultural tool, the power says hold on for dear life and the looks say 'get out of my way'.
2024 Jaguar F-Pace SVR
The fastest version of Jaguar's first ever SUV is a bit of a brute. A very old-school supercharged V8 sends the big Jag to 60mph in around four seconds, but does it with character that few other SUVs manage.
Also it sounds absolutely mighty whether on the limit or off and can be had for about half the price of the Cayenne Turbo GT. It's not long for this world though, so get one while you can.
2024 Ferrari Purosangue
Ferrari will lament the inclusion of this thing on this list but, well, we can’t make a list just for the ‘not an SUV’ Purosangue. So here it sits, alongside some of the cars it was indirectly designed to compete with. But it is very different, isn’t it? Appearing like a lifted Lusso with a Roma/296-themed facelift, the Purosangue packs everything from suicide doors to a genuine supercar heart in its 6.5-litre V12.
It’s also not a car designed to double Ferrari’s volumes, with the marque adamant it wants to keep a lid on production numbers. As a result, even at over £300,000, this car is sold out for over two years. Being a Ferrari too, there’s been some thought that’s gone into how it drives, with its revolutionary Multimatic spool-valve ‘TrueActive’ dampers giving it a spectacular breadth of on-road talent, from body control to supreme comfort.
2024 BMW X5 M
With the BMW XM on sale, the BMW X5M finally makes sense. It’s better-looking, cheaper, very nearly as fast and by all accounts, better to drive than its cave troll of a big brother.
Will passers by see you as any less of a success by driving the slightly cheaper better-looking model, rather than the four-wheeled burst ganglion? Absolutely not. And at £128,000, the X5 M is in this market – of £180,000 Range Rovers, battling it out with £200,000 Aston Martins, as well as the £300,000+ Ferrari Purosangue – a bit of a bargain.
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