Land Rover Legends
Meet Charlie Hughes who successfully re-introduced Land Rover to the North American market
CHARLIE HUGHES was already an experienced motor industry executive when, in 1986, he was appointed to lead the newly-formed Land Rover subsidiary, Range Rover of North America Inc. Land Rover had pulled out of North America 14 years earlier, largely as a consequence of British Leyland’s decision in 1971 to withdraw Rover cars from that market, although Land Rover sales had been struggling for years because many American buyers considered them to be chronically underpowered and too expensive.
“Tony Gilroy was really the driving force behind the decision to launch the Range Rover in North America,” Charlie says. “Tony became managing director of Land Rover Ltd in 1983 and he took over a company
that was facing a crisis that threatened its very survival. Land Rover utility vehicle sales had been plummeting since the early 1980s and the company had lost many of its traditional overseas markets to Japanese competitors. Range Rover sales were also declining, and Tony had to find a way forward. He was the right person at the right time. A real visionary with incredible business acumen.
“Tony realised that the US market was vital to Land Rover’s survival and future success. And it was obvious to him that the Range Rover was the only vehicle that could lead the charge there. But to do this, it would need to be pushed further upmarket. The original stick-shift two-door Range Rover would never have sold in meaningful numbers in the USA and what was required now was the four-door with a refined automatic transmission and a higher and more luxurious specification. And of course it had to be
“There were many at Land Rover who doubted whether the Range Rover could be developed to meet the US regulations, let alone attain quality levels demanded by American consumers”
fully-compliant with all the North American emissions and safety regulations.
“There were many at Land Rover who doubted whether the Range Rover could be developed to meet the US regulations and achieve the necessary levels of luxury, let alone attain the quality levels demanded by American consumers. There were long memories of how Rover had struggled in North America. But Tony led from the front and created a sense that the US regulations and demanding American customers were in some way a common enemy to be overcome, and this really focussed the North American team and the UK team to come together and find a way to fix the issues in order to crack the market. And that is exactly what we did!”
A graduate of Lafayette College, Pennsylvania, with an MBA from the University of Rochester, New York, Charlie Hughes brought with him a wealth of experience in marketing and selling European cars to the American market. “I’d been a car nut since childhood,” he says, “and I did a lot of street racing when I was at grad school. I used to read everything about cars and the motor industry that I could lay my hands on and it was pretty inevitable that I’d end up making my living in the car business. I worked at Cadillac initially, and then at American Motors which was a really high-energy place with a lot of dynamic young people on the team. From there I joined the leading advertising agency Doyle Dane Bernbach on the Vw-audi-porsche account, and then went to Fiat-lancia-ferrari as head of marketing. I spent some time back at Audi-porsche and at VW, also as head of marketing.
“I have always been fascinated by the industry and had learned a lot over the years about what was critical to building great brands and what constituted good and bad marketing. I worked with executives who knew how to lead, and a lot that didn’t. At that time the US auto market was the most sophisticated in the world and I was a voracious student of the industry. It prepared me well for the challenge of introducing the Range Rover into North America.”
Hughes quickly built a small team around him at RRONA including Roger Ball who had been sent from Solihull to set-up the new operation. Roger recalls “I’d been asked to go to the US in 1984 to assess the potential for the Range Rover and to make recommendations as to exactly how the company could re-launch itself in North America, looking at things like whether we should create our own distribution network or ride on the back of someone who was already present in the market, such as Jaguar. There were many who felt we should do the latter, but I was convinced we should do our own thing and there were powerful voices who agreed with me. I felt very strongly that sales success in the US would also benefit our sales in other markets, and when Charlie asked me to stay on as head of marketing in the new business I was delighted to do so.”
Bob Burns joined and was later to become events manager, and the late Bill Baker was recruited to head PR. Along with other talented people, they created an innovative and exciting programme to launch the Range Rover, based on an intuitive sense of who their customers would be.
“I’d first met Bob Burns when he was in his teens,” recalls Charlie. “He joined us straight from college where he had been studying mechanical engineering. Once he was on board, the first thing he did was go to the UK to spend time with Roger Crathorne and his team. Bob recently retired from the company and was an absolutely key player in its success. He was the real deal when it came to off-roading adventure, and I like to think that he became our own US version of Roger Crathorne.
“Bill Baker had been a broadcast journalist in Ohio and this led to him being offered a job by Ford in its broadcast media relations team. Two years later he moved to Volvo, and then Fiat-lancia and Ferrari, Sony, and then Chrysler. Bill’s communications and PR campaign for the Range Rover really did confirm his reputation as one of the most creative and brilliant PR guys in the industry, and probably the best ever.”
Hughes and his team put together what with hindsight seems to be an extraordinarily simple plan: they would promote the Range Rover based on its authenticity and capability, its inherent luxury, and its character. That this would involve a hefty dose of somewhat romanticised perspectives of a British way of life that involved hunting, shooting, fishing, boating and polo was also no accident, and quickly added to the appeal.
“RRONA in the mid-1980s was a small and close-knit
team, fewer than 100 people,” he recalls. “We had a very small budget to launch and promote a vehicle that most Americans had never heard off, and in so doing we would be creating a brand-new segment – the luxury SUV. Today, when every car manufacturer from Alfa-romeo to Volvo makes an SUV, it’s easy to lose sight of just how ground-breaking our marketing approach was. We knew we had to do some exciting things to get noticed.
“We chose a new creative agency to handle our advertising, Grace & Rothschild of New York, headed by Roy Grace, one of the great art directors in the history of advertising, and his partner Diane Rothschild. In fact, we were their first client. They instantly identified with the brand and how we wanted to introduce it, and this lead to advertising campaigns that were game-changing, associating the vehicle with an aspirational lifestyle and a sense of adventure, and all with an endearing and wry sense of humour. ‘British with a small b’ was how Roy described it! The launch advertisement literally broke new ground, with a headline that read ‘Introducing the world’s most beautiful vehicle’ with a vehicle covered in mud – an audacious first in automotive advertising!
“We also needed to create a new dealer network and we wanted dealers who would embrace our approach to promoting and selling the Range Rover. In January 1986 we placed an advertisement in Automotive News inviting applications to become Range Rover dealers. We had nearly 1000 applicants for the initial 36 Charter Dealers that we wanted to appoint, and by March 1987 we had over 30 dealers ready to go. We sought to persuade the best dealer in each market to add us to the high-line brand they already represented. Our initial focus was on the regions collectively known in the US as the ‘Money Belt’, which is basically the New York metropolitan area, New England, California, Florida, Texas and Colorado.
“The launch of the Range Rover in North America took place at the Chicago Auto Show in February 1987,” Charlie recalls. “We delivered our first customer vehicle on March 16 and by the end of 1987 we’d sold 2586 cars. It was a great start! Before the launch we had worked extensively on the vehicle specification to ensure that we had what we thought would be a vehicle that matched our views of what the market wanted, and the new Us-spec Range Rover pioneered a number of things that were not yet available in other markets. From the outset we got this right, and I think RRONA was central in pushing Solihull forwards in terms of the development of the Range Rover as a luxury SUV, because we had very clear views of what we needed to offer our customers. North American-spec Range Rovers offered features such as cruise control, electric sunroof and the 3.9 engine before they were introduced to other markets.
“We were convinced that the best way to deal with any lingering doubts about the Rover name was to focus on demonstrating and using the Range Rover – showing what it was capable of – and we started with our own team. Once we had all our executives on board, we gathered together in a retreat to develop the company’s mission, strategy and vision. All too often these events involve luxury conference centres and lots of presentations, but we decided to do it very differently. We hosted a ‘Love the Product Day’ where everyone got to drive the Range Rover on and offroad. We wanted to share the excitement and make sure everyone really got hands-on experience of what this incredible vehicle could do. We turned an empty field into a serious off-road test track and everyone fell in love with the Range Rover! It was so successful that we took the idea forward with our dealers, and encouraged them to create similar test circuits so their customers could experience the car off-road. We wanted our customers to love it as much as we did, and of course those customers ended up becoming our best sales people!
“This theme of showing what Land Rovers could do extended throughout my time running RRONA and Bill arranged a great many extreme driving expeditions around the world, where we gave influential motoring journalists the opportunity to drive the Range Rover in places where its incredible capability shone through. There were also quite a few trips to the UK with American motoring journalists who loved the whole stately home, fine dining, fishing and shooting thing, and all of these driving expeditions dispelled any lingering concerns that might have existed in terms of the Rover brand.”
The first journalist to experience this Range Rover ‘lifestyle’ was David E Davis Jr. of Automobile Magazine,
who flew to London to join a luxurious tour of the UK by Range Rover, hosted by Bill Baker. Very obviously an anglophile of the first order, Davis was rather overcome by his stay at Eastnor Castle, where he wined and dined sumptuously with Major Ben Hervey-bathurst and his wife Lady Somers, and by his day spent shooting with the Duke of Roxburghe at Floors Castle. When he visited the Royal Geographical Society in London he was humbled to examine the original Antarctic expedition photographic plates taken by one of his heroes, Sir Ernest Shackleton, and he was awed by his visit to Gatcombe Park to meet Captain Mark Philips, husband of Princess Anne at the time and a Range Rover ambassador. Throughout his ten-day stay in the UK Davis drove the Range Rover everywhere, toured the Solihull factory and drove the jungle track under the watchful eye of demonstration driver Don Green. That Davis fell head over heels for the Range Rover became very clear in the subsequent eight-page feature he wrote for his magazine, concluding that the Range Rover ‘is certain to be a smash hit when it arrives in North America’.
One of the most spectacular of those pioneering off-road press events, and still the stuff of legend, was The Great Divide Expedition of 1989. “Bill orchestrated the event and a number of us were fortunate enough to participate as hosts,” remembers Charlie. “It was led by conservationist and off-road adventurer Tom Collins and was the first north-south traverse of the Continental Divide, the mountain range that separates the eastern and western watersheds of the United States. Seven Range Rovers and a support 110 drove 1128 miles from the Wyoming border to northern New Mexico, climbing to over 13,000 feet, and the whole journey was made using tracks legal for vehicle travel, only around a quarter of which were paved. We had automotive and business journalists from Australia and the UK as well as the USA, and it was an excellent way to demonstrate the capabilities of the Range Rover as well as being a truly great adventure.
“By the early 1990s RRONA was well-established and successful, and we started to think about how to build out from the solid foundations we had achieved. The obvious thing to do was to introduce a second model to the North American range. But whereas in 1986 we had enjoyed the total support of Tony Gilroy, he had left in 1988 and now we found ourselves dealing with George Simpson, who had been appointed as chairman of the whole Rover group following its acquisition by British Aerospace. George was not keen on any expansion and told me to stick with the Range Rover only.
“I thought this was a huge missed opportunity. We started discussing the idea with others, and with Chris Woodwark’s unflinching support we eventually persuaded a very reluctant John Towers to support the plans for expansion. The goal was to bring the Discovery to North America but, because there was no money from BAE to promote the expansion, we concluded that the best way to market our change to Land Rover North America would be to create a strictly limited edition – just 500 units – of the Defender 110. The first North American Specification (NAS) 110s went on sale in 1992.
“Making the Defender compliant with prevailing US legislation was not an easy task because the bodywork was too weak to meet roll-over accident standards and would be too expensive to modify. But the Solihull team, and in particular the guys at Special Vehicle Operations led by Colin Andrews and Ken Palframan, really rose to the challenge and became quite spirited and passionate about it. They became our heroes!
“The final vehicle was both creative and attractive. A strong roll-cage was designed by Safety Devices in the UK that would fit partially inside the body, and partially outside. Although it was painted body colour it made the vehicle look tougher and more purposeful, which all fitted nicely with our marketing strategy. A V8 was the obvious choice and there were also a number of interior and other improvements, including air-conditioning and disc brakes all-round. It would have been too disruptive to build the NAS 110s on the Solihull production
“One of the most spectacular off-road press events and still the stuff of legend, was The Great Divide Expedition of 1989, led by conservationist Tom Collins”
lines so all were finished by SVO.
“The NAS 110 was shown to the press at the Detroit Motor Show in January 1992, and dealers started to take orders as early as the following month even though the vehicle would not be on sale for another six months. Sales were helped to no small degree by a number of high-profile celebrity customers, including Billy Joel and Jane Fonda. The 110s were built as an individually-numbered limited edition and all but one were finished in white. They have since become highly-collectable – and very expensive!
“The NAS 110 was followed by the NAS 90 which had a much sportier style and image and could be ordered in a wide range of colours, but changing regulations meant that we couldn’t sell the Defender in the USA after 1997. Those final 1997 models were unique in that they were the first Defenders to be built by the factory with automatic transmission married to the 4.0-litre V8, and they remain highly sought-after today.”
It was the introduction of the 90 that led to one of Grace & Rothschild’s most compelling advertisements, which featured a rhino chasing a 90 with the headline ‘We’d like to introduce you to the new Defender. Not now, of course’. Buried in the JLRNA archives, though, are the photographs taken just after the one used for the ad. Allen Richardson was present at the original photoshoot in 1995. “Rhinos are almost blind but he recognized his trainer’s voice,” Allen remembers. “So we took the back door off the Defender and had the trainer sit in the back, and he just called to him ‘Tank, Tank’! The rhino started chasing the 90 around a dirt track loop but after we’d got the photo we wanted the rhino got tired, so we backed up. The rhino then lunged forward and got its horn under the rear bumper and almost flipped the Defender!”
LRNA’S success with the Range Rover and NAS Defenders meant that introducing the Discovery to North America would follow the tried and tested formula. The Discovery would clearly need to meet North American emissions and safety regulations but would also need to embrace a far higher level of sophistication and luxury than the home market and European models, and Land Rover decided to combine the planned mid-term facelift of the vehicle with the developments required for the USA and Canada.
“In September 1993 LRNA announced the intention to introduce the Discovery in North America,” recalls Charlie. “In January 1994 eight pre-production or early production V8-powered NAS vehicles were shipped to Central America for the publicity exercise known as La Ruta Maya – an Expedition of Discovery. This involved a team of scientists and archaeologists and a large press contingent driving deep into the jungles of Belize to visit the sites of monuments built by the ancient Mayan Civilisation. LRNA also presented the La Ruta Maya Conservation Foundation with an ex- Camel Trophy Discovery for use in its work, and the expedition was widely publicised in North America. This successfully prepared the way for the launch of the vehicle at the New York Auto Show in April.
“The biggest challenge to growing North American sales volumes following the introduction of the Discovery was to develop our dealer organisation from dealers who were also Mercedes, BMW and Jaguar dealers to single-line Land Rover dealers. The concept was to have our existing dealers build new standalone stores, called Land Rover Centres, which would epitomise the Land Rover lifestyle. It took three years of solid work to persuade them to make the necessary investment in their Land Rover franchises.
“In 1996 we launched a team-building and vehicle knowledge programme for our dealers known as TREK.˘ It was the brainchild of Bob Burns and inspired by the glamour of the Camel Trophy. The TREK˘ teams would take part in a series of Camel-type trials using specially-modified Discovery SD vehicles. We ended up launching our first Discovery limited edition on the back of it, which we called the XD, and we used 20 specially-built Range Rovers the
following year, many of which were sold to the public after the event.
“The P38A had been launched in the UK in 1994 but our deliberate strategy was to defer its introduction to the North American market to allow enough time for production to settle down and for any issues with the new vehicle to be addressed before the car was presented to the North American buyer. The specification of the P38A for North America was also going to be unique, and Land Rover did not want to introduce the model to its production line until it was confident that it could be built properly, and this is why the new Range Rover was launched to the media in Aspen, Colorado in December, 1994, and only went on sale in January, 1995. It was very well-received and as usual we promoted it by demonstrating it and using it.
“The launch model was the NAS 4.0 SE, although this was very different from the UK market 4.0 SE. The North American model came with automatic transmission only, together with things like the electric sunroof and alloy wheels that only came on the 4.6 HSE in the UK, plus a three-year warranty that would not be offered in the UK until 1998. All of this was to do with maintaining the Range Rover’s image as a luxury vehicle, and it prepared the way for the launch of the NAS 4.6 HSE in 1996.
“The Discovery Series II went on sale in North America in January, 1999,” Charlie remembers. “I think the first-ever public appearance of the second-generation Discovery was at our headquarters in Lanham, Maryland, in April, 1998, at a Land Rover 50th anniversary event we were hosting there. In the autumn of 1998 we invited every Land Rover owner we had in our records to come to a special event at a beautiful ranch in Colorado. Not only would they enjoy a range of outdoor activities and plenty of good food but they’d also get to drive the new vehicle before the general public. John O’donnell and his team from Solihull were amazing and we chaperoned 1500 Land Rover owners over Black Bear Pass, a notorious off-road mountain trail that rises to nearly 13,000 feet. It’s not technically difficult, but make a mistake and it’s fatal!”
After 13 years at the helm Charlie resigned from LRNA in June 1999, during the period of upheaval when owner BMW had started to appoint its own executives in various senior positions across the Rover Group. BMW had adopted a fairly hands-off approach to the British subsidiary it had acquired from BAE in 1994 but with Rover losing money left, right and centre, primarily because of major problems on the car side of the business, BMW decided it needed to take more direct control. In North America the changes meant that LRNA would become more closely managed by BMW’S North American operation. For Charlie this meant losing the autonomy and the direct line to Land Rover’s main board that he had enjoyed since 1986, and this was a significant factor in his decision to leave. Ironically, BMW ended up disposing of what had become known as ‘The English Patient’ in 2000, with Land Rover being acquired by Ford.
In 2000 Charlie joined Mazda as Chief Executive of its North American operations during its ‘Zoom-zoom’ period, and in 2003 he struck out on his own and founded Brand Rules LLC, a consultancy that guides companies to shape and sustain successful brands. He has also held a number of non-executive and advisory roles and in 2006 co-authored the highly-acclaimed book ‘Branding Iron: Branding Lessons from the Meltdown of the U.S. Auto Industry’.
Today, JLR owes a phenomenal debt of gratitude to Charlie Hughes and the rest of that pioneering team at RRONA who successfully launched the Range Rover in North America way back in 1986. They transformed how Land Rovers were marketed and sold worldwide, and their brilliant public relations activities generated massive goodwill with both the media and their customers. It’s also fair to say that they revolutionised the way cars are marketed and sold in the United States. In so doing they laid the solid foundations for what is today one of JLR’S most successful businesses. And with the NAS 90 and 110 they created what remain two of the most desirable Land Rovers of all time.
“JLR owes a phenomenal debt of gratitude to Charlie Hughes and the rest of that pioneering team at RRONA who successfully launched the Range Rover in North America in 1986”
With grateful thanks to Fred Hammond, who manages JLRNA’S archive, is a true Land Rover enthusiast… and an LRM subscriber, of course!