New Range Rover Sport set to debut at New York Auto Show

It looks like the 2014 Range Rover Sport – the Sporty take on the new 2013 Range Rover – will debut in a month’s time at the New York Auto Show.

The new Range Rover debuted at last year’s Paris Motor Show, and we had expected Land Rover to debut its sporty sibling – the new Range Rover Sport – at this year’s Frankfurt show in September. But it now looks like Land Rover are planning to get the 2014 Range Rover Sport in the public eye at the 2013 New York Auto Show instead.

And actually, there’s a lot of sense in revealing the Range Rover Sport in New York because – despite the undeniable off-road credentials the new Sport will offer – the natural home for a sizeable chunk of Range Rovers Sports is prowling the urban jungle – not the real one – and New York is a proper urban jungle and a big market for Land Rover.

So it will be New Yorkers who first get to see the new Range Rover Sport, a new Sport that looks like the love child of the 2013 Range Rover and the Range Rover Evoque, has gone on a properly strict diet by swapping its underpinnings from the Discovery to the new Range Rover’s aluminium platform, and promises to offer Range Rover serenity coupled with Cayenne levels of sportiness and handling.

It’s clear the UK will get the 3.0 litre diesel and the 5.0 litre supercharged V8 – and that Americans will get the new 3.0 litre V6 Supercharged instead of the diesel option – but we are hoping Land Rover will see fit to put the 4.4 V8 diesel in the Range Rover Sport for the first time to make a properly appealing diesel Sport with proper performance and oodles of torque.

As the 2013 New York Auto Show draws closer, we should know more.