48 years of Range Rover: the evolution of the world’s most luxurious SUV

19 January, 2017

When talking luxurious, refined, well-engineered, and pioneering designs, there is probably one SUV that springs to mind … Range Rover. 

Since its inception in 1969 (as a prototype), the brand has evolved into one of the world’s most elegant and sophisticated SUVs, with any number of who’s who celebrities driving one, and it has since cracked more than one million units sold (1.7 million to date, to be exact).

Forty eight years on and it’s hard to sum up the brand’s heritage in a simple two-minute space, but it was long enough for Range Rover to celebrate this motoring icon through a specially commissioned animation — created to mark key dates in history for the legendary SUV.

You can see that today’s incarnations retain many of the original design hallmarks established way back when in 1970. These include its ‘floating’ roof design, distinctive clamshell bonnet, continuous belt line, and practical split tailgate.

Timeline: 
1969 Range Rover Prototype (Velar)
1970 Range Rover Classic (two-door)
1973 Range Rover Classic (Suffix C)
1981 Range Rover Classic (four-door)
1994 Second-generation Range Rover (P38a)
2001 Third-generation Range Rover
2012 Fourth-generation Range Rover
2014 Fourth-generation Range Rover Long Wheelbase
2015 Range Rover SVAutobiography
2016 Range Rover SVAutobiography Dynamic

Lunch with … Rodger Anderson

At first, I wondered if I’d driven up the wrong driveway. The car in the garage was an early Mustang resplendent in royal blue with two broad gold stripes, which was not what I was expecting. I knew that Rodger Anderson, who made his name in Minis and a BMW 2002, was a Porsche man these days — the other end of the spectrum from American muscle. I had no idea of his affection for Detroit iron. It didn’t take long to discover just how passionate this former Saloon Car Champion is about cars, as long as they’re interesting.

Back from the brink – 1968 MGB GT

Auckland classic car enthusiast Kerry Bowman soon realised he had a massive job on his hands in restoring his classic 1968 MGB GT. When Kerry and his MGB first appeared in New Zealand Classic Car in March 2021, in “Behind The Garage Door”, the stripped-out shell had revealed some nasty surprises. Once the true extent of the hidden damage was discovered, the work would normally have been handed over to a professional fabricator. However, with the assistance of experts such as MG specialist restorer, Paul Walbran, Kerry has completed an impressive restoration and saved this car from the scrapheap.