Our view:
With all the furore over the replacement for the venerable
Defender subsuming all before it in 2019, Land Rover has had a lot on its mind. And it also has, along with its sister brand Jaguar, a lot of fancy, 40-grand-and-upwards SUVs of various sizes. The
Land Rover Discovery Sport has just been updated and still offers seven seats (sort of) at a level of the market where there's little else premium that does. The
larger Disco has shaken off the last vestiges of its agricultural past with the fifth-generation version, while both the
Range Rover Sport and
Range Rover plough their plush furrows in the upmarket SUV sector. A second-gen
Evoque is also out and, handling the sporty mid-sized premium SUV sector, there's the
Jaguar F-Pace.
Somewhere in and amongst all this lot is the
Range Rover Velar. It was launched in 2017 to much fanfare, it used a historic name that was associated with the very origins of the Rangie back in the 1970s, and it premiered JLR's fancier new infotainment and fold-out door handles. Plugging a perceived gap in the portfolio between the Evoque and the RR Sport, the Velar was a welcome addition to the line-up.
And, if you'll forgive us for making some suppositions, it seems to be a car that's quietly going about its business, almost in danger of being forgotten as people rage about offset rear number plates and how JLR is going to infuriate farmers with its vision of a 21st century Defender, even though no farmer in Britain has bought a Defender for work purposes for decades (they all use one-tonne pick-ups, the Defender is just another posh SUV now). There are mad SVO and SVR projects filtering out of the West Midlands, but still the unassuming Velar remains. Obviously; it's only two years old, after all. But much of the column inches regarding it seem to have died down, or even disappeared entirely.
Maybe this is because its novelty value has worn off, but it's also almost certainly because its USP is a little hard to define. It's about F-Pace-sized, given it shares so much with its Jaguar cousin, but it's not supposed to be sporty to drive - the F-Pace handles that side of the battle, taking on the likes of the
Alfa Romeo Stelvio and
Porsche Macan. Similarly, the Velar can't be perceived to be more luxurious or desirable than a Range Rover Sport, or even a full Rangie, because that would upset the hierarchy apple cart.
We're not saying it's the forgotten Land Rover/Range Rover model... but we might be strongly insinuating it. So does that mean it's a forgettable SUV? Well, here's the weird thing: no, it isn't. In fact, it's one of the best JLR things we've driven in many a year. It manages to blend the typical Range Rover elements of totalitarian noise suppression and thoroughly cosseting ride quality, on its air suspension, with some of the sportiness of the F-Pace. The handling is more nuanced and involving than on the bigger two Range Rovers, even though we still think the Velar is noticeably duller at the helm than the Jaguar source material. Despite this, it manages to blend comfort with decent dynamics with such skill that it makes you forget it's ever so slightly on the wrong side of two tonnes for kerb weight - things like the sharp steering, near-absent body roll and meaty brakes make hustling the Velar both easy and reasonably rewarding in equal measure.
It helps that our test car was a D300 with the monster twin-turbo V6 diesel, which is a gem of an engine. Smooth, cultured, incredibly muscular (thanks to a hulking great 700Nm coming on stream at just 1,500rpm) and linked up to a silky eight-speed gearbox, the Velar's drivetrain exhibits no notable turbo lag nor fuzzy throttle response, so it simply picks up and goes (fast) when you ask it to. It's even reasonably frugal in the real world, as we managed to elicit 36mpg from it without once going near a motorway or dual carriageway, where no doubt it would be able to do more than 40mpg with little effort.
Throw in a wonderful cabin, which has a huge boot, enough space in the back for six-footers (although it's not exactly cavernous to sit in row two) and JLR's vastly improved InControl Pro Duo human-machine interface - this having some fancy digital buttons that change their display according to what you've pressed, allowing you to access sub-menus in a neat and effective fashion - and this suddenly looks like the Range Rover which should be leading the pack.
There are a few niggles. As we've said, despite the handling surprising us, it's still not quite as sporty as it could be. We've already said we like the ride/handling balance, but it's skewed ever so slightly too much towards the former than the latter. Visibility out of the back of the car is also an issue, as the Velar's sleek exterior lines result in a rear windscreen which is small; it can make manoeuvring the Range Rover a little tricky, even with a decent reversing camera. But these are minor observations. The bigger one is that, to get a Velar in the luscious specification of our test car, you end up paying more than £73,000. And that's where it becomes a little harder to defend. Rivals with similar diesel power don't cost anything like as much, so you've got to decide if the Range Rover nameplate is still worth the extra on its own to merit choosing the Velar.
Do you know what, though? On this showing, it just might be. A thoroughly class operator, great to look at, strong in all disciplines and, yes, wearing the RR badge, the Velar seems to have all the important bases covered. Maybe it doesn't matter quite so much what Land Rover does with the new Defender after all... wait a minute - what the heck are we saying?!