Another winner – it needs to be

JAGUAR Land Rover’s new Range Rover Velar is designed to plug a gap between the Evoque (which starts at around £30,000) and the Range Rover Sport (which starts at around £60,000). Expect the Velar to come in at around £45,000 before you add on options.

So far, that market has been the preserve of the Audi Q5, Porsche Macan, Mercedes GLC and BMW X4, meaning JLR has been missing a trick in a key segment in the booming SUV/crossover market. Not any more. It’s the fourth model in the Range Rover ‘family’ and JLR have been at pains to show the brand’s DNA and the Velar’s positioning in their teaser pictures and graphics.

Only 13 years ago, there was just the Range Rover. Now there’s the Range Rover, the Sport, the Evoque and the Velar to come.

Below the understandable hype from JLR, it is essentially a Range Rover the size of an Audi Q5 based on on JLR’s IQ platform which also underpins the Jaguar F-Pace.

It will likely come with a variety of engines, including four-cylinder and six-cylinder turbodiesel and petrol engines, and a supercharged six-cylinder engine. There might even be a V8.

Like the F-Pace and bigger Range Rovers, it will make extensive use of aluminium to get weight and emissions down, and offer attractive performance.

In short, expect another winner from JLR. It needs to be.

JLR wants to achieve at least one million in sales by 2020, which would be about half the current annual volumes of BMW, and will release a raft of new or updated products over the next five years. The Velar is another key step on that road. Professor David Bailey, Aston Business School