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Range Rover Velar – along with the Jaguar E-Pace, JLR – s other impatiently awaited fresh car

Range Rover Velar – along with the Jaguar E-Pace, JLR’s other impatiently awaited fresh car

A s Jaguar prepares the global unveiling of its fresh E-Pace mid-sized SUV on July 13, its sister company Land Rover is about to stage the international test drive of its fresh Velar. We will bring you driving impressions of the Velar as soon as the embargo lifts, but in the meantime here’s the lowdown on the other eagerly-awaited JLR product.

Robert Browning and Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe must be required probe at Land Rover these days as the design department’s “less-is-more” ethic takes a vice-like grip. These two historic exemplars of simpleness in words and furniture respectively (Browning is credited with very first using the phrase) are nowhere more explicit in modern car design than the fresh Range Rover Velar.

This, the fourth Range Rover model, fits inbetween the Evoque and Range Rover Sport in size and price. It’s also the acme of the stripped-down style evinced by Land Rover’s design department under Gerry McGovern. Even the door treats submerge back into the doors and the headlamps are super-narrow LED slits.

“We wished to elevate Range Rover’s design DNA to a fresh level,” says Massimo Frascella, Land Rover’s exterior creative director. “We were looking for a fresh level of simpleness, with the flush door treats and slender LED lights. This will do so much for Range Rover.”

T he Velar is a striking mid-sized, five-seat crossover vehicle, designed as family transport for the well heeled. The name, which is derived from the Latin for sail or veiled, was used on the twenty six very first prototypes of the original Range Rover designed by Spen King and Gordon Bashford, launched in one thousand nine hundred seventy and arguably the world’s very first SUV.

While McGovern and his team say there are no outside influences for the car, they peak their hat at King and Bashford’s work.

“We desired an emphasis on the classic Range Rover proportions,” says Frascella. “The brief front overhangs and long tail give an incredible elegance, moving the emphasis rearward like luxury yachts. There’s nothing fairly like it.”

B ased on the aluminium-intensive assets framework also collective by Jaguar’s F-Pace, the Velar will be on sale this summer priced at inbetween £44,830 and £85,450 with a typical transaction price of £61,000.

You might think that this seems like a mightily expensive embellished F-Pace, which sells for inbetween £35,000 and £52,000, but Land Rover’s marketing wonks claim the Velar parks in a £39,000-wide price gap inbetween the £30,000-£48,000 Evoque and the £59,000-£97,000 Range Rover Sport.

T his is a lower, longer vehicle than its fatter and smaller Range Rover sisters, with a lower roof height and longer wheelbase relative to length. It’s Four,803mm long, on a Two,874mm wheelbase, 1,903mm broad and 1,665mm high, which is 245mm lower than the Range Rover. And while the marque has traditionally based its appeal on all-terrain authenticity, practically the Velar is a crossover and will rival against other conventional 4×4 estates and soft-roader/crossovers, so think BMW X5, Audi Q7 and A6 Allroad, Mercedes-Benz GLE-class Coupe and Volvo XC90/V90 4×4 Country.

T he Velar has permanent four-wheel drive and a wading depth of 650mm, but there’s no transfer box providing a set of crawler gears, while the maximum towing weight of Two.Five tonnes means it’s going to be hard pressed tugging a dual horsebox.

T hat, however, is where the market is headed, according to McGovern, as he expounds “our journey from jungle to urban jungle”. There will be those using the current Discovery or old Land Rover Defenders of various stripe who will gasp over their marmalade at this, but Land Rover has been remorselessly moving upmarket and abandoning the utility end of the market to the Japanese and the South Koreans, whether they like it or not.

F rom the dashboard back, the five-seat interior is pretty conventional in dimensions. The rear seats split 40/20/40 per cent and the top-hinged (optionally powered) hatchback opens on to six hundred seventy three litres of geyser space with all the seats upright. The facia’s styling, however, sets fresh design standards, debuting fresh screen technology, upholstery materials and stark plainness including the single-piece cross plank facing the front-seat passenger.

Mark Butler, creative director for interior design, says: “There was a big thrust with the R&D team to take a real step forward in the technology presentation within the vehicle.”

The centre console uses twin high-definition touchscreens stacked on top of each other, with the lower unit in a familiar blade configuration, and the deployable upper using motors to tilt it up and out of the top of the dashboard when the vehicle is in use.

T his screen technology and the floating rotary controls are supplied by Panasonic and were introduced at the two thousand sixteen Consumer Electronics Demonstrate in Las Vegas in the Japanese electronic hard’s Concept Cockpit, including the twin multi-function rotary controls known at the time as Magic Knobs – since renamed Magic Rings.

L and Rover’s design team has worked closely with Panasonic over the last two and half years to refine the screen technology and reduce the size of the Magic Rings.

This is the very first Range Rover to suggest a top-of-the-line fabric upholstery as well as leather, a choice that has long been a project for Amy Frascella, chief designer for colour and materials at JLR.

“If I take my individual viewpoint away,” she says, “I still think it’s the right thing to do for our customers in terms of curator choice and the switching climate – I mean that literally and figuratively. The definition of luxury materials is switching and what customers value in the products they buy is switching as well. We had to be ready for that.”

The fabric is a fresh thirty per cent wool/70 per cent polyester mix, a very first automotive commission from unpronounceable high-quality furniture fabric supplier, Kvadrat.

“They had to work very hard,” says Amy, “and I have to say that they did everything we asked them to. They never said no.”

S he claims the salt-and-pepper-hued fabric is just as hard-wearing and effortless to clean as leather and costs the same. It has passed all Land Rover’s stringent tests for flammability, durability, colour stability, even its propensity to retain moisture, which can create a problem with condensation.

There’s also a fresh man-made diamond-cut material on the seats and dashboard cross plank, which has required superlative standards of fit and finish to ensure the straightness of the pattern repeat.

F our engines will be suggested; a Two.0-litre diesel producing one hundred eighty and 240PS, the attempted and trusted 300PS Three.0-litre V6 diesel, the debut of Land Rover’s Wolverhampton-produced Two.0-litre turbo petrol unit producing 250PS and a 380PS, Three.0-litre V6 supercharged petrol engine.

Spectacle across the range runs from top speeds of 130mph to 155mph, 0-60mph from 8.4sec to Five.3sec and CO2 emissions from 214g/km to 142g/km. All vehicles use ZF’s eight-speed automatic gearbox in various guises.

There are five trim levels: Standard; S which costs another £5,590 and introduces 19-inch wheels, grained leather upholstery, powered driver seat, and a powered tailgate. SE costs £3,940 over the S and includes 20-inch wheels, matrix LED headlamps, 12.3-inch TFT screen and 360-degree parking view.

H SE is £6,500 more and gives 21-inch wheels, higher quality leather, power adjustable steering column, adaptive cruise control, park assist and lane keeping assist. R-Dynamic is the top model costing an extra £2,420 and there is also a fully-loaded Very first Edition trim level with a choice of V6 diesel or supercharged petrol engines costing £83,350 and £85,450 respectively, which is well above the cheapest Range Rover Sport (£59,700) and Range Rover (£75,850).

T he Velar’s design standards have demanded a close collaboration inbetween design and engineering teams to ensure the lines of the very first sketches weren’t compromised. It was a similar story with the Evoque, which transitioned largely unchanged from Land Rover’s two thousand eight LRX concept into a fully fledged production car in 2011.

Massimo Frascella says: “I think it’s a good product at the end where all three disciplines were working at a very high level in terms of design. The blade, the feel of the interior, the exterior, how it’s so beautiful and the materials are challenging lot of traditional conventions. It’s a indeed awesome thing.”

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