The mark of exceptional design is its ceaseless legacy to inspire and shape new products, rendering them familiar yet simultaneously transformational.

Velar, the fourth member of the Range Rover family, is an instantly recognisable descendant of the original luxury SUV – a globally lauded, landmark industrial design. Yet Velar’s form, stance and proportions leave an overwhelming impression of the unfamiliar, of the new. The start of another revolution.

Velar is a distinct and further iteration of the original Range Rover character, conceived to play a powerful new role in the evolving Range Rover narrative, sitting between the Range Rover Evoque and the Range Rover Sport. Its stop-you-in-your-tracks looks are born from a process driven by ‘reductionism’, a discipline faithful to the original Range Rover but enabled by the very latest thinking in design, precision engineering and technology.

In the words of Gerry McGovern, Chief Design Officer, Land Rover: “Velar brings unprecedented glamour, modernity and elegance to the Range Rover family. It’s a vehicle that has emotionally charged DNA and unquestionable pedigree.

A new type of Range Rover for a new type of customer.”

Velar is an SUV that exudes a sense of precision, craft and quality. With fast and flush glass, delicate and beautifully slim illumination and features – inside and out – rendered invisible until required, Velar belongs in the precision-led design world of 21st century technology.

Yet its unmistakable fidelity to the idea that gave birth to the original Range Rover – the idea that what use is groundbreaking technology and engineering if it does not expand and enhance its customer’s engagement with the world – loans it an indisputable sense of purpose.

Velar takes its name from the prototypes of the first Range Rover, the first vehicle to take luxury and technology into unexplored territory – literally. Velar, with its dramatically different approach to luxury and technology builds on that idea, expanding – once again – our understanding of the notion of a luxury SUV.

“Velar is now the compelling, stand-out design in the class, showcasing perfectly optimised volume, powerful, taut surfaces and a stunning silhouette,” says McGovern.

The first Range Rover prototypes – the decoy name V E L A R spelled out in what would become a familiar style across the leading edge of the clamshell bonnets – were pioneers. Their mission was to explore whether it was possible to extend beyond the metalled road the comfort and majesty for which by the late 1960s, British cars were synonymous.

As prototypes became production cars and with constant development, especially with regard to comfort and equipment, the Range Rover became the luxury SUV, a car in a class of its own, against which all others would be judged. The ‘Royal’ SUV – often literally.

But its designers and engineers didn’t just add luxury – they added capability too. As the Range Rover has evolved it has become ever-more able to transport its occupants above and beyond the humdrum. Luxury and capability, the defining characteristics of the Range Rover, have been constantly extended in every direction for close to 50 years now.

But the sheer ambition contained in the idea of ‘Range Rover’ pushed engineers to explore new traits implicit in the supremacy of the original concept. The Range Rover Sport added dynamic excellence and the Evoque more compact drama, while never betraying the central tenets of what remains a unique idea.

Velar embraces that idea and that ambition still further, extending the core concept in line with 21st century lifestyle choices that require practicality, flexibility and connectivity as well as luxury and capability.

The first vehicle of its kind, Velar – like its forebears – is another pioneer, exploring another new frontier for luxury SUVs, this one in the rich, varied, ‘always-on’ lives of its owners. Its role, however, just like the very first cars to carry the name, remains unchanged, to go above and beyond.

Range Rovers have always looked to technology to deliver on the promise to take those inside above and beyond; whether in lightweight but robust and durable aluminium-intensive structures; or sophisticated all-wheel-drive systems enhanced by complex electronic control systems; in chassis technologies like air  suspension that deliver levels of comfort in an SUV that boggle the mind; or in a human-machine interface that exhibits simplicity, logic and familiarity.

Velar is no different. Like the clean, elegant devices we carry around with us every day, Velar’s elegant exterior and interior cloak an intense devotion to technology. Much is hidden from view, including an aluminium-intensive structure, all-wheel drive with its suite of electronic traction-control systems, air suspension, rear electronic differential and high-tech infotainment.

Much, however, is also obvious like the all-LED lights – bright, translucent highlights in Velar’s graphically reductionist form. Or the flush, deployable door handles that retract into the doors when not in use. The use of beautiful, burnished copper-coloured finish on some of the exterior detailing is another first in the automotive sector and typical of the pioneering approach taken by Velar’s design team

That approach is most striking inside, where a Premium Textile interior is offered alongside a more familiar premium leather finish. Developed with Danish technical fabric specialists Kvadrat, the unique Premium Textile seats combine a highly durable wool-blend fabric with a technical suede cloth made from recycled materials. Like the burnished copper-coloured detailing, the Premium Textile option is a world first on a volume production model.

The centrepiece of the interior is the twin-screen, 10-inch Touch Pro Duo infotainment system, which combines a rake-adjustable upper touchscreen with a second screen in the main console between the seats, which retreats to a solid, opaque darkness until required. Between the two screens, which are linked allowing occupants to move content between the two with a flick of a finger, nearly every non-dynamic feature can be controlled. “This cutting-edge, consumer technology developed by Jaguar Land Rover provides an intuitive interface with unrivalled performance and functionality,” says Nick Rogers, Director, Group Engineering, at Jaguar Land Rover.

‘Reductionism’ is a design and engineering philosophy. We are most familiar with it through the elegant, technologically-dense devices we all carry with us that have come to define industrial design in the 21st Century.

Like the most beautiful examples of personal technology, the interior of Velar appears inert until we choose to interact with it. The two screens that make up the Touch Pro Duo appear at first to be part of the very architecture of Velar’s dashboard.

It is only woken by driver or passenger interaction, revealing itself responsive to the familiar commands we have learned from our tablets and smartphones; touch, swipe, scroll your way to a new level of engagement and interaction inside an automobile.

And ‘reductionism’ isn’t just responsible for Velar’s game-changing integration of the Human Machine Interface, it governs every aspect of the interior and indeed Velar’s exterior.

That there is nothing to distract the eye – until its required – from the simplicity of Velar’s interior creates a very deliberate focus on the quality of its design, of its materials and of its construction. Born of a unique, deep and wide ranging understanding of contemporary design and luxury values, Velar represents a true modernist approach in luxury automotive interior design.

Likewise the exterior, expressed in the most deceptively simple and clearest of forms – one of lightness, one of strength – married together by Velar’s strikingly apparent shoulder line. The glasshouse especially takes this essential element of Range Rover iconography to an entirely new level and features for the first time in nearly a half a century.

Like the softness in the material on the lower door panels, the slimness of the features that hang off Velar’s feature line – features like its LED headlights and the burnished, copper-coloured detailing on the bonnet vents – are all born from a deep-seated understanding of the power of understatement.

The Range Rover concept is born of the notion that real luxury lies in the ability to transpose your own environment to wherever life takes you. And each iteration of that idea has seen Range Rover’s own horizons broaden. Velar is no exception.

It goes without saying that Velar is an extraordinarily competent vehicle in any situation. Enabled by the latest interpretation of Land Rover all-wheel drive and a deep understanding of the design and engineering pre-requisites required for the secure and comfortable commands of all terrains, Velar is a true Land Rover.

More than that, however, its overwhelming sense of desirability loans it a sense of confidence that allows it to take command not just of any terrain, but any occasion: formal/informal, metropolitan/rural, up-tempo/down-tempo, urbane/wild – Velar’s confidence enfranchises everyone.

Riding on air suspension for supreme comfort, showcasing class-leading traction technologies such as Terrain Response 2 for ultimate composure on every surface, and delivering power that’s almost undetectably transmitted via state-of-the-art, mechanical and electronic systems, to drive Velar is to understand the elemental sense of elevation that Range Rover has come to stand for over

the last five decades. It’s not just about journeys or destinations but about making them your own, weaving your own narrative every day.

Land Rover has been spinning tales from the very first day, its own included as it has evolved to embrace changing environments, none as challenging as the fast-moving, intense and connected modern world with all its complexity and contradictions.

This is Velar’s world and like all its forebears it sits aside from it all, above and beyond.

In the words of Gerry McGovern, Chief Design Officer, Land Rover: “Continued evolution driven by a relentless focus on creating desirable products that our customers will love for life is at the core of everything we do. Every new vehicle we launch is a celebration of our creative endeavours. If it excites and delights the customer then the designers and engineers have achieved their aim.”

OUTSTANDING CAPABILITY

Velar’s intelligent, efficient, torque-on-demand all-wheel-drive (AWD) system delivers exceptional all-terrain performance and agility with outstanding ride quality and composure.

TRACTION TECHNOLOGY

With a suite of world-class traction systems, including Terrain Response 2 and All-Terrain Progress Control (ATPC), Velar offers class-leading composure and control.