Designing an icon gets ever tougher, especially if you’ve done a few before, as I strongly suspect Land Rover design boss Gerry McGovern would agree.
The next Range Rover faces many constraints that none of its predecessors ever did: an immediate example is that the battery needed for its hybrid powertrain can’t be allowed to limit cabin or boot space but must impact one or the other.
What’s more, battery weight will require the new Range Rover’s surrounding structure to be lighter than ever, making life harder for engineers tasked with delivering great NVH (noise, vibration and harshness) performance and great structural rigidity. And everything in the vehicle must function not just at the levels of the existing Range Rover, but much better. It’s what the market demands.
In styling terms, the sheer number of iterations already produced off David Bache’s simple, original 1970 two-door Range Rover must be complicating McGovern’s design thinking for the fifth version, quite different in weight, proportion and every important dimension from those originals. In short, while it’s a given that the next Range Rover will look graceful, serene, sophisticated and luxurious, it will also be an engineering tour de force.
All-new Range Rover to chase Bentley and Rolls-Royce by 2021
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Steve- I have issues with the majority of this 'opinion' piece but I really have to disagree with your final paragraph the most- it is most certainly not a given that the next Range Rover will look graceful. Grace is a quality missing from the vocabulary of most automotive designers/stylists these days, including McGovern. If the latest Discovery is anything to go by, the next Rangie will be badly proportioned, poorly detailed and anything but graceful. I agree wholeheartedly with eseaton above that McGovern is creatively dead. It is my opinion that both he and Callum need to be pensioned off immediately and thanked for their service before they do any irreperable damage.
Self evidently, McGovern is
Flabby
Another flabby/PR-esque Steve Cropley Opinion! I've never seen any Range Rover as 'graceful' though the other adjectives probably apply. But surely electric power allows more flexible packaging? Which makes the styling of current luxury models look a bit ridiculous (long bonnets especially). Isn't the I-Pace the way forward rather than the picture 'imagined by Autocar'? I'd say a sort of longer wheelbase and even shallower-roofed Velar will be the next Range Rover.