![]() Push the middle of it and that roundel’s graphics change and it becomes a way to scroll through functions displayed on the instrument panel - all while your hands stay on the wheel and your eyes not far from the road. Rotate your finger slowly around the left-side roundel’s edge, for example, and you’ll turn up the volume. But at least it deals with the controls you’re likely to use less often and can repurpose the two rotary dials for the heat control as assistants to other functions - to change the drive mode or the heated-seat strength, for example.īut away from the touchscreen modes, the system’s crowning glory are steering wheel buttons that can also be repurposed. The lower screen is too low for our preference. Granted, there are a few idiosyncracies, but once you’re attuned to its ways, it’s as straightforward as you’ll find in, say, a Mercedes-Benz. The Velar gets a multimedia system all new to Jaguar Land Rover and it’s finally one that should fear nothing offered by any rival. There’s a fully digitised instrument panel, with two touchscreens, on the centre console, whose graphical resolution and functionality mark serious improvements on those used on other JLR models. In HSE specification, you get practically all you see here as standard, bar a £930 head-up display and £2225 of rear-seat entertainment, and we’d probably live without both.Ĭertainly, you won’t feel short-changed when it comes to screens to look at. There’s no low-ratio gearbox, but there is respectable ground clearance, approach and departure angles and wade depth, particularly on the optional air suspension this car has fitted. Which, in a car like a Range Rover, is a lot more than it ought to be necessary in ‘lesser’ off-roaders. Predominantly, the driveline is the same as in Jaguars: it’s a rear-drive car first and foremost, with a clutch at the gearbox that can push power to the front wheels as and when necessary. There’s a longitudinal engine in the front – we’ll come back to that – driving through a ZF eight-speed gearbox to all four wheels. Put simply, the mostly aluminium monocoque it sits on is the same as the Jaguar F-Pace’s. ![]() It feels like the zenith as if Range Rovers hereafter will need a new set of guidelines.īeneath the skin, the Velar is an entirely logical extension of the Range Rover line-up: more rugged than an Evoque, but less so than the Range Rover Sport or full-fat Range Rover. HSE brings you the 21in wheels that would have seemed ludicrously large just a few years ago but fit the Velar’s concept-like looks to a tee.Ĭar makers talk about identities and design languages: the Velar looks like the ultimate and most successful interpretation of how much more dynamic Range Rover has been trying to make its range. Our Velar arrived in HSE trim, which a lot of buyers will consider a minimum requirement for a car that looks like it has not long stepped off of a motor show stand. ![]() Whether or not that level of attention is actually deserved on a fitness-for-purpose basis will be the second objective of this road test. Taken without any additional context, those facts alone ought to guarantee the kind of feverish new-buyer interest that the Evoque generated in 2011. Range Rover Velar First Edition P380 2017 first drive.Range Rover Velar P300 2018 first drive. ![]() Range Rover Velar D180 2019 UK first drive.Range Rover Velar P400e 2021 UK first drive.Taking a view on the philosophy behind the Velar, and where it leaves Gaydon, will be one objective of this road test. In this garb, perhaps even more so than the stoutly mechanical Evoque, the Velar smacks of a modern, immodestly expensive crossover – the kind of car many would describe as the antithesis of Land Rover’s usual off-road-capability-centric modus operandi. Naturally, four-wheel drive and Land Rover’s Terrain Response system are both standard, even at the base of the line-up – but so, too, are four-cylinder engines, coil suspension and an usually low ride height for a Range Rover. Its predominately aluminium platform is the same architecture used by the latest Jaguar XE and Jaguar XF. The Jaguar F-Pace is an even closer blood relative, despite starting at £10,000 less than the Velar. Because this new Range Rover is unequivocally car-based. Unlike its full-sized siblings, the fourth addition to the Range Rover line-up is the product of something other than Gaydon’s full-fat approach to SUVs. But our preferred description refers to more than just the Velar’s dimensions. ![]()
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