Velar interiors can get a little complex, but you have to hunt for it. Elegance doesn’t exclude technology, it includes it. Oh, and there’s about two feet of digital displays stacked in the center of the dash and console, like the arrivals lounge at an all-business-class airline. Unbroken spans of leather cover the upper dash, aluminum brushes across the dash in handsome accents. The cabin sets a stage for any modern-design monthly, minus the very well-dressed people and the ubiquitous basket of pomegranates. But why punish the Velar for appealing to the trend of the day in that discreet way? OK, if there are some mildly unforgivable trend sins, the copper accents on the front fenders would be among them. From its impossibly long hood, it follows a single character line from its headlights all the way to the tail, one big crease that unites it all. It’s curvaceous without being hippy, detailed without the frippery.
2019 RANGE ROVER VELAR FREE
The 2019 Velar employs all those tricks to emphatically outline a shape that’s pointedly free of tricks and gimmicks. Heck, you can even forget the door handles-or tuck them inside the doors when they’re not needed, a la Aston Martin. Want to design the most beautiful SUV in the world? Start without any of the SUV excesses like big, blocky grilles, heavy chrome jewelry, or other bling. It steers well and rides even better, despite big wheels, if it’s not quite as crisp (or harsh) as a similarly specified Jaguar F-Pace. Fine choices, but we’d stick with the 380-horsepower supercharged V-6 that shuttles the Velar to 60 mph in 5.3 seconds, and softens its ride with a set of air springs. The base engine’s a turbo-4 powered by gas, which needs more prodding with the free shift paddles the turbodiesel-4 lags a bit behind it in response, but overdelivers on fuel economy. The 2019 Velar taps three engines, an 8-speed automatic, and standard four-wheel drive for its obedient behavior on and off road. Its interior may be festooned with digital screens, but its waves of pressed and textured leather and the Velar’s available wool seating mute the future and hit the right classic notes. With the big wheels, a lighter body color and a black roof, the Velar draws stares like no other SUV we’ve driven. The Velar’s exquisite balance of SUV stance and fastback taper is entirely new to the brand, and seems assuredly timeless. The Land Rover pen’s been sharper on the Evoque, but not more appealing. Priced from about $50,000 to more than $70,000, Velars both base and plush wear a suit swiped right from Savile Row.
It means expressive looks, wide-ranging performance, and decent interior space, with a twin-screen cockpit right out of science fiction, circa 1970-when the first Land Rover made its debut. With the Velar, Range Rover badgework no longer means formality. How far depends on your tenacity more than its, we’d bet. The 2019 Range Rover Velar has both, and with 9.9 inches of ground clearance and a Land Rover badge, it’ll get somewhere off-road. For most of the last century, SUVs were brutes with buckboard rides, while sedans and coupes had the aching rooflines and the fit-for-royalty cockpits. Don’t believe in evolution? Here’s our proof du jour: the 2019 Land Rover Range Rover Velar SUV.
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