New-Gen 2022 Range Rover Sport Spied, Could Mark Return To BMW V8 Engines

Unless you’re a Land Rover fan boy, you probably cannot tell that the outgoing Range Rover Sport has been around since 2013, but it is, and in today’s market, this makes it pretty old.

Luckily, the British company is already working on its successor, and our spy photographers snapped another prototype of the BMW X5, Mercedes-Benz GLE and Audi Q7 challenger out testing in the cold.

Review: 2019 Range Rover Sport P400e PHEV Offers Tons Of Character, But Lacks In Some Departments

It will be a while until the heavy camo and cladding start coming off, but the design is understood to be an evolution of the current model with plenty of styling cues borrowed from the Velar. It will retain, however, the series’ characteristic square profile and prominent front end.

The prototype seen playing on a snowy road in northern Europe had a quad exhaust pipe layout. On top of that, our spies said that the engine sounded very nice, hinting at a possible V8 engine. While there’s no way of debugging the rumor, Land Rover is tipped to be working on a comprehensive engine deal with BMW, which will see the latter lend its four-cylinder and V8 turbo units to the next-gen Range Rover flagship, and they could do the same to the Sport model. JLR’s new straight-six turbo in both mild and full-hybrid variants will also be on offer.

As for the platform, the third generation Range Rover Sport is believed to be based on JLR’s new MLA (Modular Longitudinal Architecture) which has been designed to accommodate an assortment of different powertrains including internal combustion engines, mild hybrid systems, plug-in hybrid systems and fully electric powertrains. It will be shared among others with the upcoming Jaguar XJ electric flagship sedan.

The all-new Range Rover Sport is believed to be introduced at the end of 2021 or early 2022.