2013 Range Rover to start at £100k – first deliveries October 2012

Probably not the 2013 Range Rover

We’re still a bit surprised that the new Range Rover didn’t debut at the Geneva Motor Show this week. After all, it’s ready to show and Land Rover are already taking orders. And we’ve spoken to one buyer of the new Range Rover who has been told he’ll get delivery in October.

So if that’s right – and we’re sure it is – Geneva would have been the perfect place to debut the new Range Rover and give plenty of time to get the order book filling. So where do we now expect the new Range Rover to launch? Surely, it has to be at Beijing next month?

A launch for the new Range Rover at the Beijing Motor Show next month would give Land Rover six months ahead of first deliveries to get their order book swelling, and China may be the place to do that as we hear the starting point for the new Range Rover will be £100,000.

£100k is more than the top end at the moment (the V8 Autobiography will probably cost you £90k with a few toys) and a more than 50 per cent increase on the current starting price for the RR (well, until the Vogue was dropped in favour of the run-out Westminster models). So it’s a big move upmarket.

We can’t believe Land Rover will wait until the Paris Motor Show in September to debut the Range Rover, but we may see the new Range Rover Sport arriving then, which is set to launch  around six months after the regular Range Rover debuts.

And we’re assuming – and it is an assumption – the the new Range Rover Sport will be built on a shortened version of the new Range Rover’s platform, which is itself a development of the new XJ’s platform.

All of which could mean Porsche and BMW have real competition on the Sporty SUV front from the new Range Rover Sport, and Bentley will need to up their game from their current SUV concept if there’s going to be any market left for them after the new Range Rover launches.