Back to the beginning with the new Range Rover Velar

The first Range Rover prototype rolled over England’s cobbled streets under the working title of ‘Velar’ when it was first introduced at the end of the 1960s. Now, as a new member of the Range Rover family, it has been baptised in the traditional name…

If you knew, you knew

There was a lot of speculation about the origin of the camouflage-inspired name Velar: Romanticists saw a reference to the Latin word velare in the model designation of the top-secret test cars of the sixties and seventies, while pragmatic spirits recognised a link to the V8 Land Rover. The compact new Range Rover model, which has just celebrated its world debut in London last night, is also called Velar — filling, admittedly, the not exactly large gap between the Evoque and the Range Rover Sport. Land Rover promised innovative assistance systems and a completely new design language of 'reductionism', and they delivered all that and more.

Photos: Land Rover