BRANDVOICE
The first new Range Rover in nearly a decade aims to bring a sense of sanctuary to the road.
In an industry where the product cycle seemingly shrinks by the day, Range Rover has stood apart in its everlasting design, continued relevance and intimate understanding of what its most meticulous customer desires. Case in point: the Range Rover flagship SUV. In more than 51 years, the new Range Rover is only generation number five: a testament to the nameplate’s timelessness, if ever there was one.
However, some things do change, and the luxury industry is feeling the push of technology and pull of broader environmental and social concerns. Range Rover’s strength has always been its ability to rise to the occasion, be it a black tie ball or a red dirt trek. So for the all-new Range Rover, the British marque looked to define what the future of modern luxury might look like, to create a vehicle that is considered, beautiful, intelligent and ready for anything. What’s more is, it has also been designed to support its occupants so that they too, exude the same confidence.
Recent studies have shown that we are more anxious than ever. Amid the ongoing re-assessment of hustle culture, burnout, work/life balance and ambition, there is a new emphasis on equilibrium and reducing the stressors in our life. Finding calm, quiet and repose —on and off the road— is more aspirational than ever. This is also where Range Rover landed when considering what would make a luxury SUV extra remarkable now and in the future.
“The New Range Rover takes the lessons learned over 50 years of evolution and combines them with 21st-century technologies to deliver supreme refinement, comfort and wellbeing on every journey,” Nick Miller, Range Rover Product Chief Jaguar Land Rover, says of the new luxury flagship. The keyword here is ‘wellbeing’, and these new technologies nod to this and include pre-emptive suspension that primes the vehicle for upcoming corners, advanced clean air technology that can neutralise bacteria, pollutants and pathogens and integrated Amazon Alexa to handle in-car tasks hands-free. Another new development that saw the marque’s engineers reexamine the current standard of calm has also meant the Range Rover is now the quietest luxury SUV in its class.
The ‘Articulation Index’ is an industry-standard measurement of the ability to converse in an environment. Range Rover’s engineers looked to this when refining the architecture of the vehicle, but with it came a new next-generation active noise cancellation technology that would bring tranquillity to the cabin —whether you’ve opted for a quieter plug-in petrol hybrid or the beastly 390kW P530 4.4-litre V8. The system monitors wheel vibrations, engine and road noise, while a pair of 60mm speakers, embedded into each of the four main headrests, create a cocoon of quiet. It also solves the problem of having to sacrifice performance for cabin serenity and elevates the Range Rover’s powertrain, particularly the P530 V8, to a place where it can enjoyed as intended, without disrupting the calm.
Like most beautiful things, it took a lot of effort to make the Range Rover seem so effortless. “What we’ve been working towards is how much can you pare it back to get that absolute simplicity,” explains Gerry McGovern, Jaguar Land Rover’s Chief Creative Officer, a quiet luxurian himself. “But once you do that, it has to be of the highest quality because you can see it. The irony is it looks dead simple. But to get this level of perceived simplicity it’s very difficult and mind-boggling. A lot of technology has evolved to allow us to get here —go talk to Johnny Ive about designing the iPhone. It’s the same sort of thing.”
The interior of the new Range Rover, particularly at the highest tier, is a well-appointed pursuit of soft pleasures: a bright, open glasshouse and theatre-style seating up-front; heated and cooled memory executive class seats, with four-way lumbar and headrest adjustments in the rear; heated door armrests; hot stone massage functions; heated heel catcher and calf rests; a refrigerator; deployable table and more are all options on offer. Meanwhile, pushing against the growing automotive trend of the mega screen, the Range Rover’s 13.1-inch curved infotainment screen is unobtrusive, thanks to some savvy UX design and clever ‘floating’ positioning. The new-gen Pivi Pro System can be personalised so that 90 per cent of all tasks can be reached in two taps —reducing the stressful need to find a command while behind the wheel.
The cabin materials have also been thoughtfully considered with leathers, veneers, metals, thick mohair carpets, sustainable Ultrafabrics materials and Kvadrat Remix textiles all on offer to meet every customer’s sensory and sustainability needs like never before. “It’s about trying to replicate the interior of a home where the desire is to create a feeling of sanctuary,” McGovern says of how this new model combines technology, materiality and the sensory. “You’re still connected, but you can get in the car, feel calm and have a break.” The old saying might say that money talks, but the new idea of modern luxury, whispers.
All images supplied. The new Range Rover is priced from $220,200 (plus on-road costs). Some of the features mentioned in this article are optional extras. For more information, visit https://www.landrover.com.au/ .