Land Rover revealed its new crossover, the Velar, ahead of the upcoming Geneva Motor Show, where the company will officially unveil this newest offering in the Range Rover model series. Nestled between the $50K Evoque and the $100K Sport models, the Velar fills a void in the marketing lineup, providing a mid-level purchase option.
Velar, from the latin Velare, ‘to veil.’ According to The Birmingham Mail’s Paul Cole, Velar was Land Rover’s secret development company when the first Range Rover model was still in production in the late 1960’s.
The design of the Velar is illuminating and open, so the name is pleasantly ironic, as well as company-historic: the glass roof provides a nearly seamless transparent survey of what’s outside the cabin. The Land Rover press release uses the term ‘avant-garde,’ and it does look a little bit adventurous and innovative for an SUV, even with the limited view Land Rover has revealed in the first photo below (the others are last summer’s test photos, when the car was still formally ‘velare,’ or under wraps).
Maybe that’s one of the more appealing selling points of a crossover: part sport-sedan, part SUV, leaving the traditional sport utility design element of insulated, boxy aggressiveness by the roadside. Crossovers can be sleek, and feature the more graceful lines of a well-designed passenger car (the prototypical crossover was probably the AMC Eagle, but—thank goodness—no one ever designed another car that looked like that).
The Velar’s mechanical specifics will be revealed by Jaguar Land Rover at the Geneva Show, but speculation has it that the engines used will be JLR’s turbocharged four-cylinder, and supercharged V6. And, of course, the Velar will place drivers on the avant-garde of interior infotainment and smart-tech features.
Jaguar Land Rover plans to release an in-depth photographic survey of the Velar on March 1st.
