Silver Dream Gracer

A fourth member of the Range Rover family has arrived. Cyril Klopper has a look at the most stylish Landie yet.

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The brochure of the new Range Rover Velar is 82 pages thick. Page 1 bears the royal crests of Queen Elizabeth, Prince Phillip and Prince Charles, because they all have a Range Rover in their garage. The brochure has a word count of 2 353 words and yet the word “sophisticated” appears just four times in it. They’re clearly too sophisticated to blow their own trumpet. But it’s the actual driving of the Range Rover Velar that really matters, isn’t it.

At first glance

The Range Rover Velar is designed to fit between the Range Rover Evoque and the Range Rover Sport, but it will attract a wholly different customer. Where the Sport is a favourite among footballers’ wives and the Evoque beams perkiness and success, the Velar will appeal to adults with impeccable taste.

As if whittled and sanded from a single block of aluminium, the Velar has smooth, unbroken lines. Even its door handles are completely flush with the body, rising out of the shell only when its owner approaches. There are no extremities, no excesses, no embellishments, just a compelling yet visually reductive design and an almost obsessive attention to detail.