Since the Evoque occupies the compact area of Land Rover's lineup, the British company is finding that its other non-Range SUVs have a more practical, family man's job on their hands. It's believed that Land Rover will roll the LR2 and LR4 into one model/nameplate and since the Discovery name is more famous that will be the one to be used.
Today, the British company announced a vision concept for the next Discovery, which is coming to the New York Auto Show. However, even before that, we knew what they were cooking up thanks to a myriad of spy photos taken over the past year. The same heavily camouflaged prototype seen testing in Europe has also made its presence felt in Colorado, where the guys at Fast Lane Car filmed it, wearing license plates from Minnesota.
Word on the streets is the British company wants to squeeze all its models into three nameplates: Range Rover (Range Rover, Range Rover sport Range Rover Evoque) Discovery (Discovery and Discovery Sport) and the Defender series, which will be the last to be developed.
These short wheelbase models are the Discovery Sport units, which are actually going to replace the LR, better known as the Freelander across the world. The full-on Discovery will have about seven seats (maybe six) and will be visibly longer.
Both models will likely share an aluminum platform with the crossover and compact sedan that Jaguar is working on. A whole lot of weight is going to be shed by dumping the cumbersome separate chassis components and going for unibody design. The lighter Discovery and Discovery Sport will thus make far better use of small four-cylinder engines mated to the 9-speed ZF auto from the Evoque.
Not only is this similar to naming scheme of the Range Rover series, but also to what Hyundai just did with the 2014 Santa Fe, which has a Sport model and a "normal" one with seven seats.
Mihnea's favorite cars have already been built, the so-called modern classics from the '80s and '90s. He also loves local car culture from all over the world, so don't be surprised to see him getting excited about weird Japanese imports, low-rider VWs out of Germany, replicas from Russia or LS swaps down in Florida. Full profile
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