One of the most respected and coveted names in the world of
off-roading vehicles is the Range Rover.
They sport a strong outdoor heritage, luxurious interiors
and widely acclaimed designs.
The Range Rover name has gone from being a single model
within the portfolio of parent Land Rover to a full lineup
of vehicles, a brand in its own right.
Some in the industry say Range Rover might be more
recognizable than Land Rover itself, which makes other
sport utility vehicles such as the Discovery and the highly
respected Defender.
From a brand perspective I think Range Rover is the brand.
I think it has much more notoriety than even Land Rover
does. Range Rovers are equally at home in the wilderness as
they are in the streets of London, New York or Dubai, and
have been favored by the British royal family and Kim
Kardashian. The Range Rover combines capability with
luxury. They have been so successful at this pairing that
Range Rovers are more likely to be bought as prestige
vehicles than what they were originally meant for.
All of this has earned Range Rover and by association, Land
Rover, an enviable place in the automotive market.
This is fortunate for its owners, the Jaguar Land Rover
group and its parent, India's Tata Motors, which have seen
their fair share of struggles in recent years.Land Rover
sold 368,066 units in the fiscal year spanning 2019 and
2020, compared with 140,593 Jaguar vehicles.
Out of the seven models Land Rover sells, four are grouped
under the Range Rover sub-brand and sales of the original
Range Rover, the Range Rover Sport, Velar and the Evoque
together comprised 70 percent of Land Rover's sales.
The Range Rover name has exceptional power earned for it by
an extraordinary product.
But its rivals are growing more numerous and more
formidable every year.
Range Rover began as a secret project within Land Rover in
the late 1960s.
The original Range Rover prototypes, of which there were
26, were given the code name Velar from the Italian word
"velare" which means to veil or cover.
The company had the idea of taking the products in a little
bit of a different direction, and they identified a more
upmarket version of a Land Rover that they thought would
appeal to the aristocracy, the landowners, or you know, the
people who had country homes, who had land.
The Range Rover was introduced in 1970.
It came with two side doors and a hatch on the back and was
the first vehicle to feature Land Rovers permanent four
wheel drive system.
A four-door version came out in 1981.
The first generation vehicle was a critical success.
Early versions were comfortable and capable, but tended to
be rugged and simple, with a lot of washable vinyl and
plastic in the interiors.
What made the Range Rover special for SUVs of its time was
an excellent performance, both off-road and on-road.
The vehicle completed an unprecedented 18,000 mile trek from
Anchorage, Alaska, to the southern tip of the Tierra del
Fuego in South America, another trek 7,500 miles across the
Sahara Desert and a modified version one the first
Paris-Dakar rally race in 1979.
The second generation Range Rover, which debuted in 1994 was
a luxury upgrade over its predecessor, taking a bigger step
toward the fancy mall prowling Range Rovers of today.
Notably, this was the generation that swapped out the
circular headlamps for rectangular ones, a design that
stuck. In the mid 1990s Land Rover also introduced its
autobiography Design Service, which allowed buyers to
customize interiors with top shelf materials.
In 1994, the German luxury and performance automaker BMW
bought the Rover Group, a family of British vehicle brands
that owned Land Rover at the time.
The third generation Range Rover, designed during this time
with heavy input from BMW, moved the vehicle even further
upmarket. Range Rover became a larger unibody vehicle,
meaning the chassis and the body of the vehicle were fused
together to form one piece.
The interior was luxurious, taking cues from high-end
yachts and first class airline cabins.
BMW owned Range Rover for a really small amount of time,
just a blink of the eye in terms of the auto industry, and
they transformed it into the brand that we know it today.
The one that, you know, you hear about it in songs and in
pop culture so much it kind of took the industry by storm.
By 2000, Land Rover was split off from the Rover group and
sold by BMW to Ford Motor Company, where it would become
part of Ford's Premier Automotive Group, that also included
Aston Martin, Volvo and Jaguar, along with longtime premium
Ford brands Lincoln and Mercury.
2005 brought the Range Rover Sport.
It gave prospective buyers a speedier variety, with its
supercharged 4.2 liter engine.
Cross-linked air suspension allowed drivers to raise and
lower the vehicle on its wheels, giving them greater ground
clearance off road or a lower center of gravity for better
handling on road.
Ford eventually sold Land Rover along with Jaguar to India's
Tata Motors in 2008 for $2.3 billion.
We've been through quite a few ownership changes over the
years and with those ownership changes has come opportunity
and opportunity has really fed into our ability to do the
right things for the products, and move it on the way we
want to move it on. Range Rover expanded its lineup yet
again with the Evoque in 2011 as the smallest Range Rover
model available. The compact SUV was critically acclaimed
and allowed buyers to get into a Range Rover at a much
lower price than they would have to pay for the flagship.
With the fourth generation Range Rover adopted an aluminum
body, a move that Ford would also later make with its best
selling F-150 full sized pickup truck.
Using lightweight aluminum gave the vehicle better fuel
economy. We're on the fourth generation now and the current
one for for sales.
Perspective is by far the most successful one that we've
built. Land Rover out did this fuel efficiency effort by
introducing a hybrid the following year.
As it developed, Range Rover transformed from a go-anywhere,
do anything workhorse to a rolling status symbol.
The transformation exemplified a larger shift in the
automotive market in the United States and increasingly
outside of it. Decades ago, off-road vehicles were tools.
Pickup trucks usually came with two doors and only one row
of seats. Jeeps and other sport utilities were functional
and capable of surmounting obstacles, but often came with a
harsh ride, poorly insulated cabins and few creature
comforts. These were vehicles for getting a job done, not
for cruising. If you wanted to do that, you got a sedan or
maybe an eye-catching sports car.
But somewhere along the way, rich drivers started favoring
pricey SUVs to ride and comfort and flaunt their wealth.
And the Range Rover was the defining vehicle of this shift.
There were very few high-end SUVs at the time.
I mean, you had a Navigator and Escalade and those kind of
capped out at a certain price.
And now you sort of develop the high end, the sort of super
premium level SUV, which really didn't exist prior to Range
Rover. It has maintained this cachet and become something
of a pop culture icon itself.
And Range Rovers sell at very high prices.
Land Rover has some of the highest transaction prices of
any brand on the market.
A fully options Range Rover Autobiography can easily top
$200,000. That does not seem to slow down sales, however.
Range Rover sales in the US grew from about 8,746 units in
2010 to a peak of 19,030 units in 2018.
They have fallen a bit since then, but so have auto sales
in the U.S. overall.
The often sky high prices have perplexed many people.
In terms of capability, Range Rovers are up there with
other off-road juggernauts like the Mercedes G -class, the
Jeep Wrangler, the Toyota Land Cruiser and 4runner, and
perhaps in some ways also a growing set of off-road ready
pickups such as the Ford Raptor, Toyota Tacoma TRD Pro, the
Chevrolet Colorado ZR2, and the RAM Rebel Power Wagon and
TRX. But the Range Rovers eye toward luxury shows and its
price tag. Newer Range Rover name bearing siblings start at
above average but still attainable prices.
The 2020 Evoque starts at a relatively modest price around
$43,000, which is several thousand dollars higher than the
average transaction price of $37,000.
But it looks downright cheap compared to the top prices for
the main Range Rover model.
But buyers who want the flagship model that made the Range
Rover name what it is will pay at least $92,000 for the
2021 model year. The price goes up from there and it can
really go up.
To be fair, plenty of other off-roaders are not exactly
cheap. The Land Cruiser also starts around $90,000 and
there are many, many other premium SUVs now on the market
from Porsche, BMW, Mercedes and even Lamborghini and Aston
Martin. But Land Rover is a name with a rugged outdoor
heritage. This is the classic British bush vehicle meant
for barreling across the African savannah, creeping through
jungles and rainforests, fording rivers and climbing over
rock formations. Vehicles like that are meant for taking a
beating, for enduring harsh conditions, for getting
scratches on their paint jobs.
Who can really afford to beat up a vehicle with a
six-figure price tag?
Range Rovers retain that original DNA of Land Rover, and
they they still can go anywhere, even if consumers don't
ever get to experience it.
If they did, they would be really impressed at what their
vehicle could do off road.
The contrast between the sheer capability of the Range Rover
and the way in which it is typically used has at times made
it the butt of a few jokes.
Like similar SUVs favored by well-heeled buyers who almost
never drive off pavement.
Range Rovers have been called names such as "mall crawlers"
and "soft-roaders."
Though it was always intended as an upmarket vehicle.
Range Rovers transformation from country going 4X4 to an
ever more luxurious coach has brought some criticism.
The engineer who designed the original Range Rover, Charles
Spencer King, said in 2004 that the Range Rover was never
intended as a status symbol.
I find the people who use it as such deeply unattractive, he
said. "Sadly, the 4X4 has become an alternative to a
Mercedes or BMW.
For the pompous, self-important driver."
Land Rovers are all about fantastic design and fantastic
capability. That's the recipe that works for us.
And that's what we found that's really built a loyal
clientele and people coming back time and time again.
And it appeals to an upper end buyer who may not take you
off road. But equally, if they choose to do so, it's
perfectly quick for them to do that.
Of course, now Mercedes and BMW are also selling luxury SUVs
that compete in similar sized segments.
If there's one other reservation a buyer might have about a
Range Rover. It's that the Land Rover brand name does not
have a sterling reputation for reliability.
For example, Land Rover ranks lowest on J.D.
Power's dependability survey.
Days gone by, there have certainly been quality issues with
our cars and we've worked to resolve those.
There's always a story, but big picture it's very important
to us and we'll continue to work exceptionally hard to keep
making our products better.
In 2020, the Range Rover has been overshadowed a bit by the
revival of The Defender, a product much of the automotive
world has been anticipating.
Defender, in its original form, represented the ultimate
civilian off-roading machine for countless admirers.
Land Rovers other product line is the Discovery.
On average, lower priced pair of sport utilities the
company markets as vehicles more intended as functional
off-roaders and family cars.
Still nice, but not quite at the same level of luxury as
the Range Rover. But the Range Rover sub-brand is Land
Rover's biggest product line.
Four out of Land Rovers, seven models bear the Range Rover
name, and together they comprised 70 percent of all Land
Rovers sold in the fiscal year ending in March 2020.
And the Range Rover and Range Rover Sport, the two most
expensive models, make up 70 percent of sales in the Range
Rover lineup. In fact, the biggest, most expensive model is
the top seller, and it is unusual for a brand's Halo
vehicle to also be its most popular.
That makes Range Rover a crown jewel within a crown jewel.
When they added Sport and called it Range Rover Sport.
I know those of us in the industry kind of scratch our heads
and we're like, well, that's confusing.
Well, then they rounded out and kept adding more and more
models to it. Now they've got this sort of sub-brand that
is clearly identified.
And in some cases, you could say that the subm-brand is
actually bigger than the brand itself, I mean, very few
people that would own a Range Rover would say, "I have a
Land Rover," whereas you might say you have a foreigner,
you have a Chevrolet. Land Rover is part of the Jaguar Land
Rover group, which is partly named for Jaguar, another
British brand with a very strong heritage, but one that has
had some trouble adapting to a changing global market.
While Land Rover has been well positioned for the broader
shift to SUVs, Jaguar, historically known as a maker of
luxurious and high-performing sedans and sports cars, has
struggled. In recent years, Jaguar has tried to carve out
its own niche in the sport utility market by focusing on
street performance and by being the first of the JLR brands
to launch a fully electric vehicle.
Electrification is coming to Land Rover as well though.
There are plug-in versions of both the Range Rover and
Range Rover Sport and Land Rover plans to electrify its
entire lineup. Developing electric vehicle tech is
expensive, and Jaguar Land Rover will need help from its
parent, India's Tata Motors.
Fortunately, Land Rover is a brand Tata Motors needs as
well. In 2020, an analyst from CLSA said Tata Motors was
worth nothing without the Jaguar Land Rover brand, which is
itself heavily dependent on Land Rover for volume and
profitability. For now, Range Rover seems to have few true
competitors. I don't think anyone had as much brand
recognition in this space as a Range Rover did.
And of course, everyone is wanting to build out an SUV
model that is ultra luxury, that is very expensive, but not
everyone is necessarily going to succeed.
So I think kind of being one of the first people to the
party is helping them out there, because it seems like the
original and the original was always a good place to be.
And I think that's why we've seen a lot of success with,
you know, the Mercedes G-Wagon as well.
The auto market, in the U.S.
and increasingly elsewhere, is still shifting towards sport
utility vehicles and toward higher priced vehicles.
Brands such as Porsche, Lamborghini and Aston Martin are
all making sport utilities, something that would have been
once unthinkable for brands synonymous with sports cars.
But SUVs are where the buyers are.
To be in all SUV brand in a time when SUV mix is over 50
percent of the industry and that's all consumers seem to
want, has really worked out in Land Rover's favor.
That means that the rarefied air Range Rover occupies could
soon see some new entries that chip away at its market
share. And if that happens, many more dominoes could begin
to fall. But Range Rover does have something a lot of
rivals don't, a strong brand heritage.
There's not a lot around it for it to really draw consumers
away from. So maybe there's a risk of fatigue.
But I got to be honest, it's really not materializing with
the way consumers are behaving.
So it could continue to be the high-end SUV of choice for
quite some time.