David Linklater.

Velar is Range Rover’s sportiestever model with a little help from Jaguar, reports

What would Charles Spencer King (1925-2010), father of the original 1970 Range Rover, think of the new Velar – arguably the most style-led and road-oriented vehicle in the maker’s current range?

It’s a fair question: the ‘‘Velar’’ name is borrowed from the prototype versions of CSK’S late1960s creation. King himself was no great fan of the urbanisation of the SUV, telling the Scottish Daily Record in 2004 that his groundbreaking creation was ‘‘never intended as a status symbol’’ and that driving such a vehicle in town was ‘‘completely stupid’’.

Well, he’d probably be glad we rose above Velar’s on-road aspirations. Part of Land Rover’s media launch for the new model in Norway was a very steep climb up a rutted and rocky access road to the top of the Roaldshornet skifield, a spectacular 1.2km above the fjords below.

Velar made light work of it. There’s a lot of technology available for the rough stuff, including Terrain Response, air suspension, All Terrain Progress Control (ATPC) – a kind of cruisecontrol for off-roading that works from 3.6kmh to 30kmh – and a locking rear differential.

So yes, even a softer Range Rover can still take on harder stuff than most SUVS.

What’s a Velar? It fits in between the Evoque and Range Rover Sport, but it’s not just a larger Evoque and it’s not just a smaller Sport. It really is its own thing. So it’s also a bit confusing.

For NZ, Velar will come with a choice of two 3.0-litre six-cylinder engines: 221kw/700nm turbodiesel (0-100kmh 6.5sec, 6.4 litres per 100km) and a 280kw/450nm supercharged-petrol (5.7sec, 9.4 litres). It’s spread across five different specification levels: S, SE,