Jaguar Land Rover Korea unveils fully revamped Range Rover Sport SUV

Jaguar Land Rover Korea unveiled a fully revamped Range Rover Sport SUV Friday, after a decade since the last redo.

Robin Colgan, managing director of Jaguar Land Rover Korea, poses with the latest Range Rover Sport SUV. [JAGUAR LAND ROVER KOREA]

Jaguar Land Rover Korea unveiled a fully revamped Range Rover Sport SUV Friday, after a decade since the last redo.

The latest mid-size luxury SUV is available in petrol and diesel versions, with both of them topped with a so-called mild hybrid powertrain. Mild hybrid refers to vehicles with an internal combustion engine that also includes a battery-powered electric motor to improve efficiency and reduce emissions.

The Range Rover Sport P360, the petrol model that comes with a turbocharged 3.0-liter six-cylinder Ingenium gasoline engine, offers a maximum output of 360 horsepower and a torque of 51 kilogram-meters. It can reach 100 kilometers (62 miles) per hour in just 6 seconds.

The D300 model, which is equipped with a diesel engine, can generate a maximum of 300 horsepower and 66.3 kilogram-meters of torque. It takes 6.6 seconds to reach 100 kilometers per hour from zero.

“I have this feeling that the new Range Rover Sport is the perfect car for Korean customers,” Robin Colgan, managing director of Jaguar Land Rover Korea, said during a press event Friday. “It can deal with the extremes of Korean weather and terrain, and I can promise you that, it’s beautifully built, a vehicle that drivers can have real confidence in.”

“After the global premiere in Iceland six months ago, we have already received more than 1,000 orders from Korean customers.”

Interior of the Range Rover Sport SUV [JAGUAR LAND ROVER KOREA]

The both models are built with what the company calls a "modular longitudinal architecture-flex," which gives the car 35 percent more torsional rigidity than previous models.

All models are equipped with Jaguar Land Rover's new infotainment system, dubbed Pivi Pro, which was developed with LG Electronics. The Pivi Pro, using Qualcomm's Snapdragon 820Am chip, is able to process multiple orders at one time without losing speed and can be remotely updated.

The vehicles will have the TMAP navigation service.

The sticker price begins from 140 million won ($106,500) and sales will begin in December.

A plug-in hybrid version of the SUV will be introduced in Korea in 2023, the company said. The hybrid will be able to run 113 kilometers on an electric motor, based on WLTP standards, and can generate up to 510 horsepower.

Jaguar Land Rover sold a total of 2,387 Land Rover vehicles in Korea this year to October, and about half of them were Range Rover SUVs.

BY SARAH CHEA [chea.sarah@joongang.co.kr]