2018 Range Rover Velar Review: Star Child

I’ve always admired salesmen. Not specifically car salesmen, but the kind of folks who travel around the country, selling chrome-laden blenders or something. The sort of fellow who could sell ice to an Inuit, if you will. It seems as if Land Rover needs a car in the $50-80k price bracket the way England needs more clouds and rain. A quick visit to the manufacturer’s website reveals that it’s not at all difficult to spec either the lower-tier Evoque or the bourgie Range Rover Sport to cover that sector.

But if you look beyond the number at the bottom of the window sticker, there is in fact a luxury SUV missing from the Land Rover lineup. Fitting between those two modern icons of the brand not in terms of price, but in size, is the model in question today. Entirely new for this model year, the Range Rover Velar poses a curious question. Can Land Rover pull off the car it didn’t need to make, and sell it to the buyer who didn’t know they needed it?