![]() ![]() (Photo: Karen Tuggay, Canadian Auto Press)Ĭlimb inside and you’ll quickly appreciate that nothing else in the compact luxury SUV segment comes even close. Land Rover charges an extra $2,040 for these 22-inch glossy black alloys when added to the R-Dynamic HSE P380. True to reality my tester was kept to tarmac, this Velar’s optional glossy black-painted 22-inch multi-spoke alloys on 265/40 Continental CrossContact LX Sport performance rubber better suited to lanes confined by painted lines and guardrails than trees on one side and cliffs to the other. Of course, that’s the way we see most Range Rovers that drive by, despite their terrain conquering legend. (Photo: Karen Tuggay, Canadian Auto Press)įrom outside the Velar looks every bit the part of a sleek, wind-cheating modern-day Range Rover, my all-black R-Dynamic HSE P380 tester certainly seeming more to do about go-fast performance than rock crawling and mud slinging. The R-Dynamic Black package turns the Velar’s trim into a menacingly dark affair. This leaves Range Rover where it’s always been most comfortable, combining equally high levels of on- and off-road capability with extreme luxury. The Land Rover brand is being positioned as the most entry-level of the three, although it still sits squarely within the luxury sector, while Jaguar is skewed slightly higher, albeit less about off-road and more toward on-road performance. ![]() The $62,000 Velar also fills a dollar void in the Range Rover lineup between the $49,990 Evoque and the $78,800 Sport, albeit my Velar R-Dynamic HSE P380, at $82,600 before adding options, goes well past that base Range Rover Sport.Īs JLR fills the “white spaces” in each brand’s lineup, it has gone to great lengths to separate mere luxury from best-by-a-long shot status. (Photo: Karen Tuggay, Canadian Auto Press) These LED headlights with LED signature DLRs come standard. I could go on comparing, but suffice to say the Velar is considerably larger than the Discovery Sport and much smaller than the mid-size Discovery, which itself is quite a bit larger than the Range Rover Sport. That makes it slightly longer and taller than the F-Pace, albeit a smidge narrower, with its wheelbase identical and track fractionally wider, yet it’s 76 mm (3.0 inches) shorter than the mid-size Range Rover Sport overall, with a 49-mm (1.9-inch) shorter wheelbase, 138-mm (5.4-inch) lower height, 75-mm (2.9-inch) narrower width, and 51/29-mm (2.0/1.1-inch) narrower front/rear track. It measures 4,803 millimetres (189.1 inches) in length with a 2,874-mm (113.1-inch) wheelbase, 1,665 mm (65.5 inches) tall and 2,145 mm (84.4 inches) wide with its mirrors extended, while its track spans 1,642 mm (64.6 inches) up front and 1,657 mm (65.2 inches) at the back. (Photo: Karen Tuggay, Canadian Auto Press)Ĭompact? Yes the Velar, like the Jaguar F-Pace it shares chassis architectures and drivetrains with, is large enough that it borders on mid-size. The new Velar fits into the compact luxury SUV segment, but it’s a bit larger than average. They probably won’t, as there’s room below the Discovery Sport for a smaller entry-level Land Rover and above the full-size Range Rover (at least for a third row), but it’s difficult to imagine them topping the Velar in the compact luxury segment. (Photo: Karen Tuggay, Canadian Auto Press)Īs far as new model expansion goes, Land Rover could stop right here at the Range Rover Velar and I’d be more than satisfied. We love the Velar’s curvaceous design, and so do leagues of luxury shoppers, evidenced by its newfound popularity. ![]() This, plus a completely reimagined mid-size Land Rover Discovery, has seen the brand’s Canadian sales grow by 78 percent since that aforementioned Discovery Sport arrived, whereas Jaguar has seen its numbers rise by 266 percent over the same period, for a collective 155 percent gain since 2014 began and 2017 ended. A few years ago we saw the Land Rover Discovery Sport enter the compact SUV segment that only had the Range Rover Evoque prior to that, albeit half a size smaller, and now the new Range Rover Velar enters the same compact SUV segment, although it’s half a size larger. Being that Land Rover is purely a sport utility brand and therefore won’t built cars (although the Evoque Convertible gets pretty close), its growth has come by adding namesake models in market segments previously held only by Range Rovers, and vice versa. The most noticeable additions include three new Jaguars, namely the XE compact sedan, F-Pace compact SUV, and all-new E-Pace subcompact SUV. (Photo: Karen Tuggay, Canadian Auto Press)īritain’s Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) group is on an unprecedented growth curve, mostly due to an obsession with filling gaps in its portfolio. This 2018 Range Rover Velar R-Dynamic HSE P380 is no dark horse despite its all-black paint scheme.
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