Simply Abu Dhabi XXX

2 7 7 S I M P LY A B U DH A B I N othing could be recorded, and phones were confiscated, but in a small courtyard at Jaguar Land Rover’s UK headquarters, we stood alongside Chief Design Officer Gerry McGovern in near sub-zero temperatures to watch the prototype wheel into view. This near-production-ready car parked beside an early clay rendition and the striking thing about the two was that they were virtually identical. “We call the Velar the avant gardé Range Rover. It brings a new dimension of glamour, modernity and elegance to the brand. The Range Rover Velar changes everything,” McGovern said. Fast forward many months later and we’re in Norway for the global media drive and once again, it looks just like the early prototype. Those razor sharp shut lines, the retracting door handles, the elegantly thin LED headlamps and overall long proportions of the basic clay sample had all made it into production. Slotting above the Evoque and below the Sport, Velar will almost certainly be the biggest-selling model of the Range Rover fleet, catering more to the on- road suburbanites than the hardcore off-roaders, yet still capable of getting mud and sand under its wheels in most conditions. The name Velar pays homage to the first Range Rover prototype of nearly 50 years ago before pre-production mules were dressed in camo paint and followed by hordes of paparazzi. The team simply badged this strange-looking off-roader as Velar to throw the press and other manufacturers off during testing. The word comes from the Latin ‘Velaris’, meaning to veil or cover, but it was also easy to quickly make a badge using letters from a Rover 3500 and modify the letter E to be an L and invert the letter V to make the A. Velar was born. Evoque has been a huge success for the company bringing new people to the brand, and it’s expected that Velar will do the same for those who don’t want to commit to the full-size Range Rover but are attracted to the brand nonetheless. The investment that sister company Jaguar put into developing the F-Pace SUV was always going to be shared with Range Rover, so it’s no surprise to know About a year ago, we were given an exclusive preview of the then-upcoming Range Rover Velar.