After launching the new Range Rover, Land Rover is slowly turning its attention towards the next-generation Range Rover Sport. The performance SUV is planned to get a full redesign at some point next year and we may already know some of its juiciest details. Expect to see a new platform and a new engine.
A recent report by Autocar says the new Range Rover Sport will ride on Land Rover’s MLA Flex architecture, which should come with 50 percent more torsional stiffness and reduce structure-borne noise by 24 percent. These are significant improvements over the outgoing RR Sport and should bring the model closer to the segment leaders, including the Porsche Cayenne and BMW X5 M.
In fact, the latter will loan its 4.4-litre engine to the new Range Rover Sport, where it will replace the ageing 5.0-litre supercharged V8. This move was expected knowing that the regular Range Rover already received a detuned version of the same unit. In the Sport trim, the British engineers will be allowed to tweak the engine with a tune that better fits the nature of the Range Rover Sport.
New RR Sport spied:
In the BMW M5 CS, the 4.4-litre V8, internally known as S63, delivers 617 bhp (460 kilowatts), while in the X5 Competition it generates 606 bhp (452 kW). We expect to see similar numbers in the SVR, which is Land Rover’s competitor for the hottest and most powerful SUVs from Munich. A 0 to 62 miles per hour (0-100 kilometres per hour) acceleration of about 4.0 seconds could be expected plus a top speed of around 180 mph (290 kph).
A very interesting piece of information found in Autocar’s report claims a performance plug-in hybrid could be also in the cards for the Range Rover Sport. The British publication says a 3.0-litre turbocharged petrol engine will be paired with a 141-bhp electric motor, while a 31.8-kWh battery package will provide an all-electric range of about 62 miles (100 km).
Gallery: Land Rover Range Rover (2022)
Source: Autocar