The Range Rover Sport of the latest generation will be a decisive model

Jaguar Land Rover is recovering from the last tumultuous 18 months with the development of what could be the most important model in the company’s history: the new Range Rover Sport.

Fresh from the successful launch of the Land Rover Defender, for which the order bank is already well above projections. The Jaguar Land Rover group also returned to profit last year under the crucial company recovery plan ‘Project Charge’. Engineers and designers have now shifted their focus to what should be an even bigger profit generator: the Range Rover Sport 2022.

The third-generation rival to the Porsche Cayenne is expected to stick to the formula of the current model. It will adopt more electrified propulsion systems and an upgraded technology range, and will aim to maintain the balance between luxury and dynamic capability for which both previous models were famous.

Today’s Range Rover Sport will celebrate its seventh birthday in March, and this year it will receive a subtle facelift along with the addition of a mild-hybrid Ingenium inline six-cylinder engine.

Under normal circumstances, a seven-year-old vehicle would be nearing the end of its life cycle, but the massive engineering operation involved in introducing the new hybrid ‘three-in-one’ MLA platform has delayed the rollout of the company’s next generation of premium models.

Will it become the best Range Rover Sport ever?

While the launch priority will be the new flagship Range Rover model, due to be unveiled next year, it is the closely related Sport model that has been a serious cash generator since the original launched in 2005.

Before Ford sold Land Rover in 2008, it was heavily rumoured throughout the industry that the Mk1 Sport generated the highest profit margins of any Ford product worldwide. Although annual sales were a modest 35,000 or so, customer enthusiasm for the car meant showroom transaction prices were extremely healthy.

However, it was the current Mk2 Sport that truly changed the fortunes of Jaguar Land Rover, as the model outsold the Range Rover and its sales peaked at 80,000 units annually. Land Rover, like most carmakers, refuses to disclose the average transaction price of a Mk2 Sport, but even at a relatively conservative figure each unit would represent annual revenue of €6.4 billion at retail prices.

To retain this success in the future, a key ingredient for the new model is the handling that conceals its size and weight, as achieved with the first- and second-generation versions. Styling is also crucial. More than one senior designer at a rival carmaker has said the current Sport is a favourite contemporary design, something clearly reflected in its showroom performance.

New Range Rover Sport, under the spotlight

The Mk3 Range Rover Sport is not expected to repeat the major design change seen from the Mk1 to the Mk2. As with the Discovery, changing the formula too radically would be considered too great a risk.

Building another sport with class-leading handling should not be a major challenge given the move to the new MLA hybrid platform. The first new car on this architecture will be the Jaguar XJ battery-electric EV, which Jaguar Land Rover says will be revealed after March.

Few concrete details have emerged about the MLA. It is built substantially from aluminium and will be noticeably lighter than the outgoing D-series aluminium platform, which resulted in cars that were often no lighter than steel-platform rivals.

Like the all-new architectures of BMW and Mercedes-Benz, the MLA platform will allow Jaguar Land Rover to produce mild-hybrid, plug-in hybrid and purely electric versions of the same model on the same production line.

For the plug-in and hybrid models, rear-wheel power will be provided by an electric motor. On the road, its torque-vectoring capabilities will greatly improve agility, while on the road, the ability to precisely feed torque to the rear wheels also promises another capability shift.

While the Range Rover 2021 is said to have a BMW-sourced V8 thanks to its status as an absolute luxury model, the new Range Rover Sport is expected to emphasise eco-friendly performance.

Like today’s facelifted model, the flagship sport model will again feature a forced-induction six-cylinder with mild- and full-hybrid assistance. The Mk3 Sport is also likely to get a four-cylinder hybrid model, and there is a chance the new four-cylinder engine will be BMW-sourced as Jaguar Land Rover moves towards a comprehensive powertrain alliance with the German manufacturer.

The combination and choice of propulsion systems for the new-generation Jaguar Land Rover cars is the most important aspect of the new project, as well as the most costly aspect of the vehicle.

According to the group’s own research, by 2026 battery-electric vehicles are expected to account for 23% of the world market segments in which it competes. Hybrids and plug-in hybrids sit at 16% of the market, diesel at 12% and petrol at a surprising 49%.

These figures are for world markets and, as the group admits, are difficult to estimate. However, the larger models are the least suited to being made purely electric because of their weight and frontal area.

It is likely to be a purely electric Range Rover, but it will be a shorter-range city vehicle aimed at Asian megacities. The Jaguar I-Pace has years of life ahead of it, and the next ‘Road Rover’ is likely to represent the backbone of both manufacturers’ EV sales.

According to documents published last year, its MLA implementation plan begins with a ‘large saloon’ (the Jaguar XJ) and a large SUV (the Range Rover 5), followed by a ‘mid-size SUV’, believed to be the lowest and most elegant Road Rover. But the new Sport should reap the biggest rewards from the enormous investment. The company expects its flat profit margins to return to 7-9% beyond 2023, which will place the British carmaker firmly back in premium territory and set it on a new period of calm.

Land Rover: a focus on sales
To put the importance of the new Range Rover Sport into perspective, we must examine Land Rover’s sales figures in recent years. Between January and November 2016, Land Rover sold 78,600 Range Rover Sport, well ahead of the 49,900 Range Rover and 46,700 Discovery also sold during that period.

While the group’s bosses can be congratulated for establishing three of the company’s four premium models as strongly differentiated brands that seem to suffer little from cross-shopping, it is worth noting that the Discovery 5 has failed to pull off the same trick.

During the January to November 2016 period, the old Discovery 4 sold 46,800 units. During the same period last year, sales of the Discovery 5, which launched in 2017, were just 32,232. And that figure also represented a 19% drop in sales figures for the same period in 2018.

With the Land Rover Defender clearly defined just weeks from the showroom, reinventing the Discovery to re-establish itself as a distinct member of Land Rover’s growing premium family will be a significant hurdle, even if it lies in the future.