Land Rover’s plan to build tension ahead of next week’s 2022 Range Rover launch with a blurry teaser is in tatters after a leak revealed the whole car. The company’s official press photograph, a profile shot showing the obscured car in profile, was soon forgotten as a full suite of PR images including interior pictures presumably earmarked for next week’s unveil, plus three unretouched pictures apparently shot covertly, surfaced online on various Instagram accounts, including Cochespias.

They show the 2022 Range Rover as looking almost identical to the outgoing car from the front and side. There’s a new shallower grille, a cleaner horizontal intake in the lower section of the front bumper and subtly different light clusters at the front, and while the profile appears unchanged, the door gills are new and the ’22 car adopts the flush-fit handles from the Evoque and Velar.

 

But it’s the rear view that’s most changed. In place of the old cars’s chunky light clusters, there are slim vertical lamp units that appear as black panels when not illuminated, and are connected via a transverse panel below the rear window on to which the Range Rover lettering is fixed. Images of the interior reveal a new four-spoke steering wheel that looks like the one fitted to early 2000s BMW 7-Series sedans, elegant natural wood on the console, and a larger tablet touchscreen that’s bigger than anything else in Land Rover’s model line and floats in front of the dashboard surface. That touchscreen will run Land Rover’s latest Pivo Pro software, and appears to be joined by a new design of gear selector, a TFT gauge cluster and fully digital climate control panel.

Despite the mostly same-again styling, the 2022 Range Rover is substantially different underneath the skin and is based on the company’s new MLA Flex platform engineered to work with ICE, PHEV and fully electric powertrains.

 

A fully electric Range Rover won’t arrive immediately, and Land Rover has retired its old 5.0-liter supercharged V8, likely leaving the first group of buyers to choose between a carryover mild-hybrid 3.0-litre inline six, a BMW-sourced 4.4-liter turbocharged V8, and a plug-in hybrid. If it’s the same PHEV system fitted to the Defender 400e it will comprise of a 2.0-liter petrol engine and electric motor serving up a combined 398 hp, though Land Rover may feel the Range Rover deserves, or needs, more.

The 2022 Range Rover will come in standard and extend wheelbase guises, but don’t expect more than five seats, or much change from £ 90,000 or US$ 100,000 when it hits dealers in spring 2022.