Following on from the success of the Evoque and praise for the new Range Rover Land Rover are set to reveal the new Range Rover Sport in a live drive through Manhattan on 26 March, en route to the New York Auto Show.
Instead of showing the new SUV to journalists at the Auto Show the Range Rover Sport's reveal will take place in public on the streets of New York. The city was chosen because more Sports are sold there than in any other city in the world, and it's North America's best selling Land Rover.
Land Rover say the new Sport will be the fastest, most responsive and most agile car in the company's history. It will be based on the new Range Rover's chassis (the outgoing Sport was based on the Discovery's chassis), which itself is based on the Jaguar XJ platform. The new Range Rover is 400kg lighter than the old one so it's no wonder the new Sport will be faster than it's predecessor. It's likely to be less thirsty too.
Engines in the new Sport will be supercharged and naturally aspirated versions of the 5 litre V8, a supercharged 3 litre V6 and the 3 litre TDV6 found in the Range Rover.
Motorauthority recently published the spyshots shown below of the new Sport which show that the design seems to be an amalgam of the Evoque and Range Rover with a sleek body, narrow windows, high waistline, narrow headlights and the shark fin fake air intakes on the front doors.
In the UK the Range Rover Sport has lost some of it's cachet and has become something of a footballers car - never a good thing. Will the new Sport manage to reign in it's image as a sporty, classy SUV rather than a vulgar symbol of wealth? We'll find out on 26 March.
If you want to watch the drive through New York live then log in to the dedicated microsite at www.newrangeroversport.com and follow #NewRangeRoverSport on Twitter.
