Range Rover Velar for assessment for a few days

[Steve McF]

Every now and then, I get a car from work for a weekend assessment. This weekend, I managed to get offered a 75 reg Range Rover Velar 6 cylinger petrol Belgravia edition!! Only, it got booked to me for a week!!!!

When I get a car, we have to do an appraisal, and report on anything that didn't work properly, or things that annoyed us, or even things that we were really happy with.

This car isn't a ropey old engineering shed, it is a line built production car used for these appraisals to build up a picture of what the cars are like, and highlight any issues that may need investigating.

Well we went down to Devon at the weekend, then came back via north Devon and then Cardiff, before heading up the M50/M5/M42/M40 to get home. Last night I had to go to Coventry to pick something up, and in between, it has been my work commute transport and everyday hack.

I read/see various things where people slag off Land Rover and Jaguar products, especially those featuring Ingenium engines. Now, I believe that there were issues with the earlier engines (as there tend to be with most manufacturers engines) but these were rectified.

Anyway, I digress!!! As an engineer in the car industry, we tend to be overcritical of things that ordinary customers never even notice. So as the years have gone on, I have tried not so much to focus on things that I might be looking out for, but to try and just live with the car as if it was my own, and see if anything stands out that I don't like.

I don't think I've ever had a disappointing car. There are some where I have reported a few things, and others where I have reported very little in my appraisal. However, whilst there are a couple of minor issues I will be pointing out, my overall impression of this car is that it is fantastic. I could easily live with one of these as our own car.......obviously that won't be happening as we'd never be able to afford to buy or lease one, but nonetheless, it's a great car.

You don't see as many on the road as you do, say, Range Rover Evoques or Discovery Sports, but it is slightly bigger than both of those. This car has a great engine, great refinement, comfortable ride, and it doesn't feature the horrible mobile phone/tablet inspired dash that some of these hideous Chinese (and American) EVs have.

We had an Omoda 9 and a Jaecoo 7 in a few weeks back. The Omoda was actually a very good and competent car, drove well, good equipment levels and quality of materials, if somewhat bland styling. The Jaecoo 7 on the other hand, looks like it rips off a lot of exterior styling cues from the RR Velar and Evoque, yet when you get inside, the dash is horrible, the quality of materials is poor, and the car just comes across as cheap and nasty. And yet, there are loads of them on the roads here, and they are something like No 5 in the UK top 10 cars. I suspect that is because they are all on cheap lease deals to help the brand get established.

I could live with the Omoda - it's a competant car, but the Jaecoo really was rubbish in comparison. Then again, the Omoda was about £48k, so I wouldn't be having one of those either!!!!

Meanwhile, back to reality.....a 56 reg 9-3 Aero and a Peugeot 107 

[sgould]

We hired a Skoda when we were on holiday.  It was a nice enough car with plenty of power for a small turbo.

But the dashboard was horrendous.  It was like an iPad.  Using it was no different from using a phone while driving.  If you were on a long drive, as we were, a passenger is essential to act as a co-pilot as in an aircraft.  Touch screens and scrolling have no place in a car.  At least the EU have recognised this and rules have changed to make essential controls more “traditional”. Is this why a Range Rover has gone this way?  In sure the temptation from designers would have been to make a top of the range car more “space age” than the competition.   Or is it that the customer base is rich old men who don’t like computers?

[carrera]

Handbrake and physical key would always be the first points of frustration for me (so NG 9-5 fails on this)

But then you have all the speed control & other "driving aid" stuff that you have to disable

I don't think I could get on with anything post 2017... the NG 9-5 is already modern enough for me

I hear there's a recall on the Jacoo already, & the Chinese cars seem to be very much like early 1970's Datsuns. being sold on looks & gadgets, or course the Japanese cars were already more than that.

[welshwizard]

Velar with 6 cylinder petrol?  I thought they only had variations on the 2-;litre....  I like the look of the Velar, probably the best looking SUV there is but I think they are thief magnets in our neck of the wood.

Last hire car I had was a Skoda K-something. it wasn't too bad...

When we bought our Golf nearly 6 years ago, I had a mission to make sure it was not a Mk7.5 with some of the driver aids, so we do have a 2016 car R-Line with teh 150PS 1.4 litre engine. The 2016 had nav and a sunroof which was missing from the 2015 and 2017 cars.....  the 2016 does have some features but not as off-putting as later cars...

[Steve McF]

Looking at the fleet info for the car I had, it was a UK spec 6 cylinder petrol, so assume it is available in this country 😉