Range Rover Velar test drive
A great friend of AvtoTachki has wanted to test Velar for a long time. When they finally met, Matt admitted that he would like to always drive this car. He also drew a psychological portrait of the buyer.
The Range Rover Velar is an amazingly sophisticated and delightfully easy station wagon. It's also a luxury sports sedan and a very capable SUV. All this means that the Velar is a pretty good buy because you get at least three great cars.
The only flaw in Land Rover's “multiple personalities” marketing strategy is that most people don't buy three cars at the same time and tend to be a fan of one. Well, if you're planning on getting any new Range Rover, price is the last thing you look at.
I dare to assume that most future Velar owners rarely ride off-road. Maximum - sometimes they fall into the zones of road works in the city. Thus, for most buyers, the ability of a car to climb a mountain or easily cross a swampy valley is as important as the names and pedigrees of the cows that were killed to create the plush seats.
Guided by this logic, I conclude that the Velar is not large enough for a real executive sedan either. There is more legroom in the back than most small SUVs, but certainly not comparable to any business sedan from Jaguar, Mercedes, BMW, Audi or Lexus. All of them, by the way, are in the same price range as the Velar.
When your buying decision is based on how focused or relaxed you appear in meetings, the gadget saturation and sleek look won't do Velar any good for business sales. The Velar is neither a threat nor a cheaper alternative for Range Rover fans. The one that used to be called Voque.
What the Velar is really good at, and what most of the Velar sold in Russia can be designed for, is ... just using it as a tall, very beautiful crossover with a cool badge. Unfortunately, a large number of buyers in this segment are busy transporting children from place to place.
During a test drive, I discovered that square meters of ice-cream-colored leather, a bluish-black mirrored front panel and a huge display with a touchscreen look like a crime scene literally a couple of minutes after getting to know the eight-year-old: the entire Velar interior is a magnet for fingerprints. ...
There is a lot of competition in the small luxury SUV segment. First of all, this is a close relative of Velar - Jaguar F-Pace, as well as Porsche Macan, the most expensive Audi Q5, BMW X3, all sorts of Mercedes G-, and Lexus - all very nice, beautifully assembled and using exotic materials, as well as design magic ...
I think that in a segment of the market where performance and price are not the main criteria for choosing the end user, and all players use exceptional materials and assembly standards, it ultimately comes down to reputation, tastes and tricks. That's why the developers' efforts are focused on looks, style, intricately arranged disappearing door handles and a stunning dual-something touch-screen infotainment system that essentially turns most of the control panel into a huge iPad.
Official advertisements describe the Velar salon as a unique triumph of "downsizing". In general, they got rid of all the knobs, buttons and switches that can be replaced with "virtual" controllers on the touchscreen. All that's left is a retractable speed selector (like the coffee can lid you see on any modern Jaguar), a large, sophisticated steering wheel, and two wide multifunctional programmable knobs.
When the ignition is off, it feels like everything you are left with either looks like an endless black pool, or like a laboratory Petri dish, splattered with the fingers of a child who managed to get out of the back seat.
The interaction of the driver with the Velar is endlessly programmable. But why? Most of the owners are pretty busy. Sitting in it for the first time, they will set up the mirror and seats, connect to it via Bluetooth and go in standard mode in slow-moving city traffic. Everything. They won't change or tweak anything else until the new iPhone is released.
Land Rover had to come up with something clever to explain the high price, but I think they overdid it. The real pleasure of driving a Range Rover, unlike, say, a Toyota RAV4 is knowing that you can afford it. Technological sophistication could be replaced with a chocolate fountain or a hand-made otter, if none of the other manufacturers came up with it.
Let's go back directly to the car. The amazing thing about Velar is that it looks much larger on the outside than it actually does. Land Rover very cleverly used long, continuous lines along the sidewalls to create the optical illusion of length. Plus, this crossover has a much lower stance than other cars from the brand, so it looks taller than it actually is. The driver's seat is more comfortable than spacious.
The peculiarity of the interior is how comfortable the seats are, how fast the controllers respond and the smoothness of the movement and transmission, the interior is bright and bright, and the air conditioning system (this is especially important this summer) is excellent.
Our car had some kind of super system that reproduced a gorgeous sound. Without the included music, in normal driving conditions, the cabin is very, very quiet. The visibility is excellent, without blind spots, the cameras transmit the perfect picture, so for a car that generally feels quite large, parking is not a problem at all.
The digital tidy did not make any positive or negative impression. She's very cute, but slightly distracting. The amount of information this car provides: impressive - I confess I spent an hour or two here with my son (thus an eight-year-old) turning things on and off. With rumbling music, it reminded me of the time I spent in Ibiza as a teenager.
Of the shortcomings, although not the most serious, our car had a small diesel engine and it is not very interesting to drive it in standard mode. Somehow the computer takes an extremely conservative approach to fuel economy and speed, it reacts without much enthusiasm when you press on the gas, but with each setting above standard it got better and better.
He is steady, seems confident and safe. I couldn't get the car to do anything too impressive, but in fairness ours wasn't in the most impressive package.
The second drawback is stupid removable door handles, which sooner or later will refuse to appear or disappear: their failure to appear will not allow you to be inside, and the fact that they will not be removed will lead to ridicule from passers-by. Agree, an ultra-sleek, expensive sports SUV with four bulky pieces of metal sticking out looks silly.
Another drawback is the large, flat front. Yes, it reminds you that this is a Range Rover, but somehow, due to its shape, it attracts every speck of dust and dirt that passes by. So the Velar owner will have to spend a lot of time at the car washes.
So, you may not understand yet, but I really liked the car - I would love to get one without further thought. It doesn't matter, with or without a tame otter. First of all, it is a perfectly executed fashionable thing for beautiful people who can afford it.
At the same time, the Velar is the test model for the next several generations of Jaguar Land Rover technology. A beautiful car that shows us the future. And by the way, it looks promising.
