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Jaguar Land Rover reportedly developing Road Rover car

Reports are circulating in the automotive media that Jaguar Land Rover is developing a vehicle that's not an SUV. Called the Road Rover, it would be an all-electric luxury car with "some" all-terrain capability, hinting at all wheel drive. Initially, the EV would launch in late 2019, then spawn more models to complete the lineup. There is also talk about JLR's interest in an outright purchase of an existing luxury car brand to join its portfolio, and that parent company Tata has already given this strategic move the green light. Tata has also reportedly made moves to protect its JLR ownership via acquiring more of its own stock. All this excitement brings to mind the fact that there once existed an actual Road Rover — the Rover brand. Having evolved into MG Rover before going into administration in 2005 and subsequently reborn in China under SAIC Motor ownership, Rover was a moderately posh British carmaker just beneath the level of prestige that Jaguar offered. For some years, both were part of the same corporation. The last Rover saloons were designed and built with BMW input, and at that point Land Rover had already become part of Ford, almost a decade after Jaguar did. Ford's tenure with Land Rover lasted from 2000 to 2008, when Tata bought the British brand — along with the Rover name. Would it just make sense to badge the road car Rover, with no Road or Land affixed to it? Rover's slovenly demise is more than a decade old now, but there's plenty of valuable history still embedded in the long-shelved Viking ship logo. Cast aside memories of Sterling-badged Honda Legend platform siblings and unattractively Federalized SD1 series cars, and take whatever good the 1999-2005 Rover 75 brought to the table — maybe it's time for Rover to be reborn in the current Jaguar Land Rover family. According to Autocar, the first Road Rover would be developed in tandem with the next-generation Jaguar XJ, so they would share an aluminum architecture suitable for both internal combustion engines and battery electric technology, depending of the model. If anything, there is delicious irony to this: The 1980s XJ generation that Jaguar spent decades developing was claimed to be engineered in such a way that the occasional stablemate Rover's Buick-derived 3,5-liter V8 wouldn't have fit in its engine bay — to preserve the Jaguar bloodline. To have the new XJ and a Rover cross paths again would only be fitting. Related Video: This content is hosted by a third party.

Brabus takes on Range Rover Sport with Startech widebody kit

Of all the tuners this side of AMG, none are as close to Mercedes-Benz as Brabus. After all, when Daimler needed a tuner to spruce up the Smart car, it was Brabus that it turned to. But Brabus tunes vehicles other than Mercedes - it just uses, let's call it, a pen name. It brands them Startech, like the widebody kit it's developed for the new Range Rover Sport and will present at the Geneva Motor Show next week.
The modifications center around the carbon fiber body panels Brabus (excuse us, Startech) has developed for the British sport-ute that give it over two inches of added width. The wider fender flares encompass 23-inch wheels that are forged, ceramic-coated, skinned with low-profile rubber and fitted to a lowered suspension. The front and rear bumpers have been redone in plastic and can be fitted with or without the wider fenders, and there's a three-piece roof spoiler at the back.
Startech is also offering an upgrade for the 3.0-liter twin-turbo-diesel V6 that squeezes out an extra 31 horsepower and 59 pound-feet of torque for a total of 323 hp and 501 lb-ft, dropping the 0-62 time from 7.2 seconds to 6.9. The German tuner also has a wide array of interior modifications on offer, details of which you can read about in the press release below and scope out in the high-resolution image gallery above.

Land Rover could build a baby Defender on a platform sourced from BMW

The collaboration between BMW and Jaguar-Land Rover started out small, it was originally limited to motors for electric cars, but it might not stay that way for long. The Tata-owned British sister companies will allegedly rummage through Munich's sizable parts bin to build nearly half a dozen cars scheduled to come out during the 2020s. According to a report by British magazine Autocar, Jaguar has started designing two small cars that will join its growing family of Pace-badged soft-roaders. They'll be new additions to the firm's portfolio, not replacements for existing cars. One will be a regular crossover, while the other will be a swoopier, form-over-function four-door model ostensibly marketed as a coupe. Both will slot at the very bottom of the Jaguar portfolio, below the already pretty small E-Pace, in a growing market segment where the competition is fierce, and profit margins are thinner than an i3's tires. Here's where BMW apparently comes in. Instead of developing a platform from scratch, the two crossovers could ride on the hybrid-ready, front-wheel drive FAAR architecture found under the third-generation 1 Series hatchback and the upcoming 2 Series Gran Coupe. If we believe an earlier report claiming Jaguar and BMW will also share engines, most of the hardware found under the sheet metal will have German genes. All-wheel drive will certainly be available, and it could also come from BMW. The same platform -- and, presumably, the same engines -- would provide the basis for a Land Rover-badged model positioned in the same segment. Autocar learned it will be to the next-generation Defender (pictured) what the Mercedes-Benz GLB is to the G-Class. Some key design cues will carry over, but the two models will share absolutely nothing under the sheet metal. The soft-roader could resurrect the Freelander nameplate when it goes on sale during the 2020s. Looking even further ahead, the front-wheel-drive platform the next Mini Countryman and X1 will utilize could find its way under the replacements for the next Range Rover Evoque and Discovery Sport. These plans could very well change; the Evoque and the Disco Sport barely entered their second generation, so they're not due for a replacement until the second half of the coming decade. While neither company has confirmed or denied the report, the partnership makes sense from a business standpoint.