A new Land Rover Range Rover arrives for the 2022 model year. With it, the off-road luxury wagon will mark a few firsts, and the return of some familiar features.
On the latter, the next Range Rover will revive Land Rover’s links with BMW. Most versions tap a potent BMW-sourced twin-turbo V-8 for power. On the former, the base Range Rover now comes with a mild-hybrid powertrain standard; plug-in hybrids arrive soon, with a full electric Range Rover due to arrive in 2024.
There’s also a new seven-seat, long-wheelbase model that should give the Range Rover one of the few things it’s lacked—critical now that the landscape of luxury SUVs includes everything from Uruses and Bentaygas to Wagoneers, Escalades, and Navigators.
2022 Land Rover Range Rover (New)
2022 Land Rover Range Rover (New)
2022 Land Rover Range Rover (New)
Range Rover styling: New matters
Against the progressive design of the last-generation Range Rover, the new SUV’s look offers a more subtle advance from nearly every angle.
The outline changes little from the recent versions of the Range Rover, and if the prior version seemed restrained, the new one’s almost shorn of extraneous detail.
“What is there is there for a reason,” Design Director Jerry McGovern explained during a recent showing of the 2022 Range Rover in New York. The new vehicle is flush with detail but without the usual heavy SUV surfacing. Rectangles perforate the grille and brightwork blends into the lower bumper, in tandem with nearly flush side glass. A thin line slices from nose to tail just under a shoulder line that omits the usual bright trim on its way to meet a gently sloped roofline. If the last Range Rover had sculptural qualities, this one’s overtly sculpture.
At its front door hinges, the SUV wears U-shaped metallic trim that doesn’t seem to have a pure purpose. It’s for aesthetics, McGovern backtracked, “because that is a function” as well.
At its rear, the Range Rover has a set of vertical blade-style taillights. It’s the most overt exterior cue to the design influence of electric cars. Inside, it’s easy to spot those cues, though it’s more of a gradual change than in, say, a Cadillac Lyriq. The Range Rover’s crisply drawn cabin has the airy and spare feel of a modern media wall, with a curved 13.1-inch touchscreen plunked on its smoothly leathered surface like the Prada art installation that stands on a stretch of Texas road outside Marfa. A 13.7-inch screen displays gauges. Trimmed with woven Kvadrat upholstery or leather, inlaid with copper or wood trim (or both), and fitted with ceramic-covered control knobs from the new SV design themes, the Range Rover’s new cabin radiates an urbane glow, as if it’s an extension of a tony loft.
Of course, it could seem awfully familiar to buyers shopping the new Hummer EV or the Rivian R1S, or even a Lyriq. Not every luxury SUV shopper wants glamour to be the unifying commodity that shrouds them through life. Some of them want quite the opposite.
2022 Land Rover Range Rover (Technology)
2022 Land Rover Range Rover (Technology)
2022 Land Rover Range Rover (Technology)
2022 Land Rover Range Rover (Technology)
Range Rover performance: Bring on the volts
The new shapes usher in a new powertrain future for the Range Rover. Not only will this be the first Range Rover to ride on 23-inch wheels, it’ll be the first to come with battery-only power. That version’s due to arrive in 2024, and no further details have been confirmed.
A plug-in hybrid arrives before the Range Rover EV, in the 2023 model year. In that vehicle, Land Rover promises up to 62 miles (on the WLTP cycle) of plug-in driving thanks to a 38.2-kwh lithium-ion battery pack and a 105-kw electric motor. Rated at 434 hp net, the powertrain can run on electric alone at speeds of up to 87 mph. On a 50-kw charger, it can be juiced up in about five hours.
Before that arrives, the 2022 Range Rover adopts the brand’s current mild-hybrid turbo-6 powertrain with 395 hp and 406 lb-ft of torque, shuttled through an 8-speed automatic. That’s offered only in the SE trim; every other Range Rover for the 2022 model year will offer a BMW-sourced 4.4-liter twin-turbo V-8 good for 523 hp and 553 lb-ft of torque. If that recalls powertrains from the era when BMW owned Land Rover, so will its performance data: Land Rover predicts a 0-60 mph time for V-8 Range Rovers of 4.6 seconds.
With its hallmark all-wheel-drive system, six-mode terrain-management system, and active locking rear differential, the Range Rover doesn’t backtrack from its off-road roots. It can disconnect its front wheels for better fuel economy, for sure—but still sports up to 11.6 inches of ground clearance in its highest air-suspension setting. It takes on more technology to bridge the gulf between rock-climbing and stair-stepping at 24 Hour Fitness, too: it now has twin-valve Bilstein dampers for finer body control, a 48-volt electronic anti-roll system, and it now links two miles’ worth of navigation data with its suspension to predict and adaptively damp the vehicle for the road ahead.
All-wheel steering gives up to seven degrees of opposite steer to the rear wheels at low speeds, which leads to a turning circle of 36 feet and, Land Rover claims, much better high-speed stability when the rears steer with the fronts.
2022 Land Rover Range Rover (Technology)
2022 Land Rover Range Rover (New)
2022 Land Rover Range Rover SV
Range Rover comfort, safety, and features: more seats, more sense
The 2022 Range Rover won’t lack for many features, and for the first time up to seven passengers will be able to enjoy them. Most versions remain five-seat SUVs, but some long-wheelbase Range Rovers can be fitted with a third-row seat that’s large enough to cosset 6-foot-tall passengers in style, with good knee and head room and a leather headliner.
It’s made possible by a body that’s grown substantially. The standard Range Rover has added about three inches in wheelbase, while the stretched version gains about eight inches. A new adjustable cargo floor can partition off that space for more organized feats of packing people and luggage behind the split tailgate, too. Outfitted as a four-seat executive edition, saddled with a rear-mounted “event seating” fold-away bench, and shod with pop-out wood-trimmed snack tracks, it’s a mobile VIP lounge missing only the boarding announcements.
The $105,350 2022 Range Rover SE has five seats and a mild-hybrid powertrain. It’s $6,000 more for the long-wheelbase body and two more seats, and $14,700 more than the base price to add the twin-turbo V-8. All versions have leather upholstery, satellite radio hardware, wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, and wireless smartphone charging.
All other models come with the twin-turbo V-8 standard. The $153,350 Autobiography five-seater can be upgraded to the long wheelbase and seven seats for $6,000 more. A First Edition costs $159,550 in standard spec or $5,300 more for the long-wheelbase body. More plush models can come with a 1,600-watt Meridian sound system and active noise cancellation, power-assist doors, twin rear-seat entertainment screens, and a surround-view camera system. At the top of the lineup a new Range Rover SV series offers extended selections of leather and interior trim, and special paint schemes streamlined to SV Serenity and SV Intrepid themes, as well as a Signature Suite configuration with 24-way power-adjustable massaging seats and power-deployed tray tables. By then, you’re well into the $200,000 range.
The 2022 Range Rover is on sale now and deliveries are expected by spring of 2022. The prior version of the SUV will also be sold as a 2022 model, side by side with the new.
For GREAT deals on a new or used Nissan check out Nissan of Costa Mesa TODAY!
