off-roading vehicles is the Range Rover.

They sport a strong outdoor heritage, luxurious interiors

and widely acclaimed designs.

The Range Rover name has gone from being a single model

within the portfolio of parent Land Rover to a full lineup

of vehicles, a brand in its own right.

Some in the industry say Range Rover might be more

recognizable than Land Rover itself, which makes other

sport utility vehicles such as the Discovery and the highly

respected Defender.

From a brand perspective I think Range Rover is the brand.

I think it has much more notoriety than even Land Rover

does. Range Rovers are equally at home in the wilderness as

they are in the streets of London, New York or Dubai, and

have been favored by the British royal family and Kim

Kardashian. The Range Rover combines capability with

luxury. They have been so successful at this pairing that

Range Rovers are more likely to be bought as prestige

vehicles than what they were originally meant for.

All of this has earned Range Rover and by association, Land

Rover, an enviable place in the automotive market.

This is fortunate for its owners, the Jaguar Land Rover

group and its parent, India's Tata Motors, which have seen

their fair share of struggles in recent years.Land Rover

sold 368,066 units in the fiscal year spanning 2019 and

2020, compared with 140,593 Jaguar vehicles.

Out of the seven models Land Rover sells, four are grouped

under the Range Rover sub-brand and sales of the original

Range Rover, the Range Rover Sport, Velar and the Evoque

together comprised 70 percent of Land Rover's sales.

The Range Rover name has exceptional power earned for it by

an extraordinary product.

But its rivals are growing more numerous and more

formidable every year.

Range Rover began as a secret project within Land Rover in

the late 1960s.

The original Range Rover prototypes, of which there were

26, were given the code name Velar from the Italian word

"velare" which means to veil or cover.

The company had the idea of taking the products in a little

bit of a different direction, and they identified a more

upmarket version of a Land Rover that they thought would

appeal to the aristocracy, the landowners, or you know, the

people who had country homes, who had land.

The Range Rover was introduced in 1970.

It came with two side doors and a hatch on the back and was

the first vehicle to feature Land Rovers permanent four

wheel drive system.

A four-door version came out in 1981.

The first generation vehicle was a critical success.

Early versions were comfortable and capable, but tended to

be rugged and simple, with a lot of washable vinyl and

plastic in the interiors.

What made the Range Rover special for SUVs of its time was

an excellent performance, both off-road and on-road.

The vehicle completed an unprecedented 18,000 mile trek from

Anchorage, Alaska, to the southern tip of the Tierra del

Fuego in South America, another trek 7,500 miles across the

Sahara Desert and a modified version one the first

Paris-Dakar rally race in 1979.

The second generation Range Rover, which debuted in 1994 was

a luxury upgrade over its predecessor, taking a bigger step

toward the fancy mall prowling Range Rovers of today.

Notably, this was the generation that swapped out the

circular headlamps for rectangular ones, a design that

stuck. In the mid 1990s Land Rover also introduced its

autobiography Design Service, which allowed buyers to

customize interiors with top shelf materials.

In 1994, the German luxury and performance automaker BMW

bought the Rover Group, a family of British vehicle brands

that owned Land Rover at the time.

The third generation Range Rover, designed during this time

with heavy input from BMW, moved the vehicle even further

upmarket. Range Rover became a larger unibody vehicle,

meaning the chassis and the body of the vehicle were fused

together to form one piece.

The interior was luxurious, taking cues from high-end

yachts and first class airline cabins.

BMW owned Range Rover for a really small amount of time,

just a blink of the eye in terms of the auto industry, and

they transformed it into the brand that we know it today.

The one that, you know, you hear about it in songs and in

pop culture so much it kind of took the industry by storm.

By 2000, Land Rover was split off from the Rover group and

sold by BMW to Ford Motor Company, where it would become

part of Ford's Premier Automotive Group, that also included

Aston Martin, Volvo and Jaguar, along with longtime premium

Ford brands Lincoln and Mercury.

2005 brought the Range Rover Sport.

It gave prospective buyers a speedier variety, with its

supercharged 4.2 liter engine.

Cross-linked air suspension allowed drivers to raise and

lower the vehicle on its wheels, giving them greater ground

clearance off road or a lower center of gravity for better

handling on road.

Ford eventually sold Land Rover along with Jaguar to India's

Tata Motors in 2008 for $2.3 billion.

We've been through quite a few ownership changes over the

years and with those ownership changes has come opportunity

and opportunity has really fed into our ability to do the

right things for the products, and move it on the way we

want to move it on. Range Rover expanded its lineup yet

again with the Evoque in 2011 as the smallest Range Rover

model available. The compact SUV was critically acclaimed

and allowed buyers to get into a Range Rover at a much

lower price than they would have to pay for the flagship.

With the fourth generation Range Rover adopted an aluminum

body, a move that Ford would also later make with its best

selling F-150 full sized pickup truck.

Using lightweight aluminum gave the vehicle better fuel

economy. We're on the fourth generation now and the current

one for for sales.

Perspective is by far the most successful one that we've

built. Land Rover out did this fuel efficiency effort by

introducing a hybrid the following year.

As it developed, Range Rover transformed from a go-anywhere,

do anything workhorse to a rolling status symbol.

The transformation exemplified a larger shift in the

automotive market in the United States and increasingly

outside of it. Decades ago, off-road vehicles were tools.

Pickup trucks usually came with two doors and only one row

of seats. Jeeps and other sport utilities were functional

and capable of surmounting obstacles, but often came with a

harsh ride, poorly insulated cabins and few creature

comforts. These were vehicles for getting a job done, not

for cruising. If you wanted to do that, you got a sedan or

maybe an eye-catching sports car.

But somewhere along the way, rich drivers started favoring

pricey SUVs to ride and comfort and flaunt their wealth.

And the Range Rover was the defining vehicle of this shift.

There were very few high-end SUVs at the time.

I mean, you had a Navigator and Escalade and those kind of

capped out at a certain price.

And now you sort of develop the high end, the sort of super

premium level SUV, which really didn't exist prior to Range

Rover. It has maintained this cachet and become something

of a pop culture icon itself.

And Range Rovers sell at very high prices.

Land Rover has some of the highest transaction prices of

any brand on the market.

A fully options Range Rover Autobiography can easily top

$200,000. That does not seem to slow down sales, however.

Range Rover sales in the US grew from about 8,746 units in

2010 to a peak of 19,030 units in 2018.

They have fallen a bit since then, but so have auto sales

in the U.S. overall.

The often sky high prices have perplexed many people.

In terms of capability, Range Rovers are up there with

other off-road juggernauts like the Mercedes G -class, the

Jeep Wrangler, the Toyota Land Cruiser and 4runner, and

perhaps in some ways also a growing set of off-road ready

pickups such as the Ford Raptor, Toyota Tacoma TRD Pro, the

Chevrolet Colorado ZR2, and the RAM Rebel Power Wagon and

TRX. But the Range Rovers eye toward luxury shows and its

price tag. Newer Range Rover name bearing siblings start at

above average but still attainable prices.

The 2020 Evoque starts at a relatively modest price around

$43,000, which is several thousand dollars higher than the

average transaction price of $37,000.

But it looks downright cheap compared to the top prices for

the main Range Rover model.

But buyers who want the flagship model that made the Range

Rover name what it is will pay at least $92,000 for the

2021 model year. The price goes up from there and it can

really go up.

To be fair, plenty of other off-roaders are not exactly

cheap. The Land Cruiser also starts around $90,000 and

there are many, many other premium SUVs now on the market

from Porsche, BMW, Mercedes and even Lamborghini and Aston

Martin. But Land Rover is a name with a rugged outdoor

heritage. This is the classic British bush vehicle meant

for barreling across the African savannah, creeping through

jungles and rainforests, fording rivers and climbing over

rock formations. Vehicles like that are meant for taking a

beating, for enduring harsh conditions, for getting

scratches on their paint jobs.

Who can really afford to beat up a vehicle with a

six-figure price tag?

Range Rovers retain that original DNA of Land Rover, and

they they still can go anywhere, even if consumers don't

ever get to experience it.

If they did, they would be really impressed at what their

vehicle could do off road.

The contrast between the sheer capability of the Range Rover

and the way in which it is typically used has at times made

it the butt of a few jokes.

Like similar SUVs favored by well-heeled buyers who almost

never drive off pavement.

Range Rovers have been called names such as "mall crawlers"

and "soft-roaders."

Though it was always intended as an upmarket vehicle.

Range Rovers transformation from country going 4X4 to an

ever more luxurious coach has brought some criticism.

The engineer who designed the original Range Rover, Charles

Spencer King, said in 2004 that the Range Rover was never

intended as a status symbol.

I find the people who use it as such deeply unattractive, he

said. "Sadly, the 4X4 has become an alternative to a

Mercedes or BMW.

For the pompous, self-important driver."

Land Rovers are all about fantastic design and fantastic

capability. That's the recipe that works for us.

And that's what we found that's really built a loyal

clientele and people coming back time and time again.

And it appeals to an upper end buyer who may not take you

off road. But equally, if they choose to do so, it's

perfectly quick for them to do that.

Of course, now Mercedes and BMW are also selling luxury SUVs

that compete in similar sized segments.

If there's one other reservation a buyer might have about a

Range Rover. It's that the Land Rover brand name does not

have a sterling reputation for reliability.

For example, Land Rover ranks lowest on J.D.

Power's dependability survey.

Days gone by, there have certainly been quality issues with

our cars and we've worked to resolve those.

There's always a story, but big picture it's very important

to us and we'll continue to work exceptionally hard to keep

making our products better.

In 2020, the Range Rover has been overshadowed a bit by the

revival of The Defender, a product much of the automotive

world has been anticipating.

Defender, in its original form, represented the ultimate

civilian off-roading machine for countless admirers.

Land Rovers other product line is the Discovery.

On average, lower priced pair of sport utilities the

company markets as vehicles more intended as functional

off-roaders and family cars.

Still nice, but not quite at the same level of luxury as

the Range Rover. But the Range Rover sub-brand is Land