High Range

Redefining Off-Road Luxury.

- Angus Mackenzie

We’re in a darkened room in the heart of Land Rover’s design center in Gaydon, England, and Gerry McGovern is talking about Hermès handbags. “A lot of well-heeled women have an insatiable appetite for these things,” he says, gesturing at the colorful images of beautifully crafted leather work projected on the screen in front of us. Land Rover’s chief design officer, dapper in a bespoke chalk-stripe gray suit and gray turtleneck sweater with a rose gold Audemars Piguet Royal Oak peeking out from under one cuff, is using pictures of $12,000 handbags to help explain his vision for the future of Range Rover.

McGovern’s fundamental point is that all handbags do pretty much the same thing—they carry stuff. Likewise, a Range Rover, a Jeep Grand Cherokee, and a Toyota Land Cruiser all do pretty much the same thing: Confidently take you where no roads go. But, says the Land Rover design boss, notions of functionality and capability, flexibility and sustainability—all the sober left-brain stuff that’s used to rationalize which handbag, or which SUV, you might actually need—are easily overwhelmed by the white heat of desire.