Range Rover Second Generation E-Book

James Taylor

• Herausgeber: Crowood
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

The second generation Range Rover was arguably Land Rover's first model designed as a luxury vehicle. It was a major leap for the company, but a very successful one as well. Despite controversy over its looks, and some initial teething problems, it became a worthy successor to the much-loved original. Range Rover Second Generation The Complete Story draws on the memories of designers and engineers as well as on a wide variety of factory sources to provide the most authoritative history of the mode yet. The book covers the full development history; the changes during eight years of production; Range Rovers for the North American market; full technical specifications and finally Range Rovers and the emergency services.A companion volume to the author's Range Rover First Generation - The Complete Story (Crowood 2018).

Leseprobe

OTHER TITLES IN THE CROWOOD AUTOCLASSICS SERIES

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Ford Transit: Fifty Years

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Land Rover Discovery: 25 Years of the Family 4×4

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Morgan 4/4: The First 75 Years

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Porsche Boxster and Cayman

Porsche Carrera: The Air-Cooled Era

Range Rover: The First Generation

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Riley: The Legendary RMs

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Triumph TR: From Beginning to End

Triumph TR6

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TVR: Cars of the Peter Wheeler Era

TVR 1946-1982

VW Karmann Ghias and Cabriolets

Volvo 1800

Volvo Amazon

RANGE ROVER

SECOND GENERATION

THE COMPLETE STORY

James Taylor

THE CROWOOD PRESS

First published in 2018 by

The Crowood Press Ltd

Ramsbury, Marlborough

Wiltshire SN8 2HR

www.crowood.com

This e-book first published in 2018

© James Taylor 2018

All rights reserved. This e-book is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of thistext may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 1 78500 474 2

CONTENTS

Introduction and Acknowledgements

Timeline

CHAPTER 1DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT

CHAPTER 2EARLY DAYS, 1995–1997

CHAPTER 3A CHANGE OF PLAN

CHAPTER 4REACHING FOR THE SKY

CHAPTER 5THE NORTH AMERICAN MODELS

CHAPTER 6AUTOBIOGRAPHY

CHAPTER 7EMERGENCY SERVICE VEHICLES

CHAPTER 8BUILDING THE 38A RANGE ROVER

CHAPTER 9AFTERMARKET SPECIALS

CHAPTER 10BUYING AND OWNING A 38A

Appendix I: VIN Codes and Engine Numbers

Appendix II: Paint Codes

Appendix III: Production Figures

Appendix IV: UK Prices 1994–2002

Index

INTRODUCTION AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

When I wrote my first book about the 38A Range Rover back in 2004, I was deeply conscious of the fact that there were many areas of the model’s history that still needed to be researched. I’m pleased to say that I have been able to fill in many of the gaps in the story over the intervening fourteen years, and this book contains an account that is not only more in depth, but is also in some areas more accurate.

Even so, the business of researching the story behind the 38A Range Rover is probably far from finished. In preparing this latest book, I was astonished to discover how difficult it can be to unearth details of such things as the overseas special editions, and I don’t doubt that there is more to say on some other aspects of the story as well. So if any readers are able to provide extra information, I’ll be very pleased to hear from them through the publishers.

Meanwhile, I have to acknowledge that a vast number of people have contributed to the knowledge that this book contains. Over the years I have been able to talk to many Land Rover people who were involved with the 38A, and in particular to Malcolm Ainsley, Bill Baker, John Bilton, Roger Crathorne, Mike Gould, John Hall, Charlie Hughes, Mike Sampson, Graham Silvers, David Sneath and George Thomson. Some of these names, sadly, are no longer with us. I visited the assembly lines many times, drove multiple examples both on and off the road when they were new, and even managed to get myself invited to BMW’s engine factory at Steyr in Austria to see the diesel engines being built.

Other information has come from a multitude of owners, enthusiasts, aftermarket specialists, and those who simply sold or fixed the vehicles. They know who they are, and they know I’m grateful. Finally, special thanks go to my longtime friend photographer Nick Dimbleby, who willingly and enthusiastically provided a lot of the pictures I’ve used in this book.

James Taylor

Oxfordshire

January 2018

TIMELINE

1994, September

Global announcement of new ‘38A’ Range Rover.

1995, September

Automatic diesel models introduced.

1996, October

Autobiography custom-building scheme announced.

1998, September

Revised ‘Thor’ V8 engines.

1999, October

New fourth (Vogue) level of trim announced. Facelift with masked headlamps and smoked indicator lenses.

2000, July

Land Rover Ltd sold to Ford Motor Company.

2002, February

Last 38A Range Rover built.

The distinctive promotional motif used when the second-generation Range Rover was introduced in 1994. The line of trees stretching into the distance was intended to suggest the infinite possibilities that ownership could bring.

CHAPTER ONE

DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT

By the time Land Rover introduced the second-generation Range Rover in autumn 1994, the original model had been in production for no fewer than twenty-four years. Even then, its production life was not over, because Land Rover kept on making it for another eighteen months or so to ease the acceptance of the new model. The old one had developed such a following that the company was understandably nervous about how well the new one would go down.

After the Discovery name was taken for the new vehicle that had been developed as Project Jay, the Range Rover project was renamed Pegasus. This slide was made for a presentation at the time.

Quite obviously, the first-generation Range Rover was an enormously hard act to follow. As its creator, Spen King, said to the author in the mid-1990s, it is one thing to design a completely new model that becomes impressive over the years, but a much harder task to follow that up with a replacement that has to be impressive from the start. So it is important not to underestimate the size of the task that was facing Land Rover in the mid-1980s when it began to contemplate how to replace the Range Rover. By global standards, it was still a small company – tiny when compared to Toyota, then, as now, the world’s largest maker of four-wheel-drive vehicles – and by any standards replacing an icon like the Range Rover was a very tall order.

From 1988, the new Range Rover project became known as the Discovery programme. This picture of a wall in the styling studio shows some of the ideas that were then in play.

It was not until 1988 that Land Rover really began to focus on creating a new Range Rover, and the design and engineering programme went through three stages between then and the vehicle’s 1994 launch: first it was called Project Discovery, then it became Project Pegasus, and finally it became Project 38A. The six years of its development present a complicated story, which is more easily understood when divided into segments. So this chapter begins with the background to each of those three project stages, and then goes on to tell the detailed story of how each element of the vehicle came into being. But as a prelude to that, it is worth taking a look at what had happened before 1988.

When the Pegasus name began to attract unwelcome attention, John Hall changed the project name to 38A. This is a slide from another internal presentation.

FIRST THOUGHTS

A few ideas for a new Range Rover had been considered after Land Rover Ltd had become a standalone business within British Leyland in 1978. However, discussion on the subject was entirely theoretical, because nobody had identified a date by which such a new model might be needed, nor had anybody given any serious thought to what might be expected of that new model. There would, inevitably, be a new Range Rover one day. But for the time being, the old one was selling very well, thank you, and there were plans to make it a more luxurious vehicle than it had been when new in 1970. There was no real vision beyond that.

The earliest indication that Land Rover had started to take the challenge of a new Range Rover seriously dates from 1981. Land Rover’s long-serving Chief Engineer, Tom Barton, retired that year, and his deputy Mike Broadhead took over from him. Broadhead initiated a concept study within the Engineering Department that was known as Adventurer. Its aim was to investigate a rationalized range of Land Rovers and Range Rovers that would share as many common features as possible. These features would not be confined to such things as engines and gearboxes, but might also include a common body-chassis structure. This aspect of the study was handed to Gordon Bashford, a key figure in the design of the original Range Rover, who also retired that year and found himself immediately retained as a consultant on Adventurer.

In the Adventurer study, a great deal of effort was put into better packaging that would give more interior space for a given vehicle size. Gordon Bashford’s part of it proposed some quite original ideas, but there was never any real chance that Adventurer would be anything other than a paper study. Land Rover were already too far down the road with a new Land Rover utility – introduced as the One Ten in 1983 – and were not going to need another all-new model for some years. However, Adventurer was not entirely forgotten. The concept of a rationalized range remained alive and well by 1985 – after Mike Broadhead had left and Bill Morris had become Chief Engineer – when it was revived as the twin Inca and Ibex projects.

THE INCA AND IBEX PROJECTS

By 1985 Land Rover was beginning to re-establish itself after a very difficult period in the early 1980s. The company’s traditional overseas markets, notably in Africa, had collapsed under the twin impacts of government changes in overseas funding, and cheap, light 4×4 utilities made in Japan. The company’s core product, represented by the last of the Series III Land Rovers and the first of the One Ten and Ninety coil-sprung models, was struggling for overseas sales. In 1983 Land Rover had recorded its first ever annual loss, and new Managing Director Tony Gilroy was faced with the job of turning the company around.

It could have happened: there were early discussions about making the new Range Rover a sort of people carrier, and this rendering from the Styling Department reflected that. The date appears to be early 1985, and the designer was George Thomson, who later took the lead on the second-generation Range Rover.

One of the full-size renderings for Range Rover during the Ibex phase is seen during a viewing at Drayton Road.

His decision was to re-orient Land Rover towards developed countries, to make up losses in Africa by gains in Europe and the USA, and to do that he needed a product that would have the right appeal. The utility Land Rover, even in its latest coil-sprung One Ten and Ninety form, was not it, and the only solution was to make the Range Rover into a luxury-class product. So by 1985 there was a new regular production flagship variant called the Range Rover Vogue in showrooms, plans for introducing the Range Rover to the USA were being implemented, and a programme of future upgrades had been mapped out to make the Range Rover a more credible alternative to expensive luxury saloons.

In that climate, it is no surprise that somebody decided it would be wise to take a more serious look at the longer-term future of the Range Rover. So it was that the first proper thinking about a new Range Rover went into a pair of related projects that were known as Inca and Ibex. Land Rover was far from cash-rich at the time, and so the plan was to develop both utility Land Rovers and a new Range Rover from the same basic structure. There has been some confusion about which code name referred to which vehicle, but the discovery of some photographs of new Range Rover proposals in a drawer in the old Styling Department (now known as Design) a few years ago makes clear that the Range Rover was Ibex.

Quite a lot of planning was done around these twin concepts, but neither progressed beyond the drawing board. Those who were involved remember that the Range Rover was to have an all-welded body, while the Land Rover would need a bolt-together construction to allow for overseas assembly and a large number of different variants. This fundamental divergence tended to drive the two designs in different directions, and in the end the designers decided it was not possible to build the two vehicles off a single common platform.

While work was being done on Inca and Ibex, Land Rover’s business priorities were changing. Tony Gilroy had commissioned a market study to determine the best way for Land Rover to go forward, and during 1986 this made clear that there were important developments in the 4×4 market. On the one hand, the success of the Range Rover had led to the creation of a number of cheaper imitators, mostly made in Japan, that were aimed at family buyers and were selling strongly. On the other hand, there was a growing interest in the use of 4×4 vehicles to support outdoor sporting activities, and customers expected those vehicles to be as comfortable and easy to drive as a conventional car.

It was obvious that if Land Rover could develop a model that would cater for both of those market sectors, it could have a strong-selling product that would accelerate its return to long-term sustainability as a company. So by mid-1986, the number one product development priority at Land Rover had become Project Jay, which would be launched in 1989 as the Land Rover Discovery. One result was that Inca and Ibex simply withered on the vine. However, it is interesting that Project Jay reflected similar thinking: just as Inca and Ibex would have minimized costs by sharing major components, so the Jay vehicle minimized costs (and development time) by sharing its chassis and much of its drivetrain with the existing Range Rover.

CHANGES OF OWNERSHIP (1)

Land Rover Ltd had been formed in 1978 as a standalone business under British Leyland, although of course the Land Rover marque had started life in 1948 as an offshoot of the old independent Rover Company. After a major reorganization in 1986, what had once been British Leyland became the Rover Group, and Land Rover Ltd retained its independence within that new group. However, British Leyland had been under government control since 1974, and by the end of the 1980s the Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher was pursuing a policy of privatization. So the Rover Group had to go, and the selected new owner was British Aerospace, who took nominal control in 1988.

One of the first things to happen under the new ownership was that the Rover Cars and Land Rover design and engineering departments were amalgamated. This was not universally liked – Spen King (by then retired) was among those who described it as a political move to prevent the two halves of the company from being sold separately if and when British Aerospace in turn decided to sell the Rover Group. Nevertheless, the amalgamation was beneficial to the development of the second-generation Range Rover, because the car specialists (who were needed to add the appropriate luxury touches) could more easily be seconded to the team who were developing it.

SERIOUS DEVELOPMENTS

Project Discovery, 1988

The bulk of the design and engineering work on Project Jay was expected to be completed by the end of 1988, and this would allow Land Rover to start thinking about other new products again. But it was already obvious that some preliminary work could be done on the projected new Range Rover before the main design and engineering resources were freed up.

As a first step, Product Director Steve Schlemmer brought in John Hall from the Freight Rover light commercial vehicles side of the Rover Group, and appointed him as Group Chief Engineer. Hall’s responsibility was for the Styling Department (as Design was then called) and Forward Engineering, and under the latter of course came planning for the new Range Rover. This was given the formal name of Project Discovery, and was run by a small team working under Bob Allsopp. Hall himself meanwhile spent most of the year reviewing the scope of the project and how the business could cope with it.

From the start, Hall had to deal with certain fundamentals. At the time, Land Rover was committed to using permanent four-wheel-drive on all its vehicles. All Land Rover products were expected to have class-leading off-road abilities, and that meant the new Range Rover would need a two-range transfer gearbox. It would also have to give a cossetting on-road ride if it was to be a credible luxury car, and so independent suspension would have to be investigated as an alternative to Land Rover’s traditional ‘live’ axles front and rear. Engines would need enough power to give good on-road performance, and enough torque to give excellent towing performance as well as the low-down grunt needed for off-road work.

As for size, the new model would need more passenger space than the existing Range Rover, where the 100in (2,540mm) wheelbase gave poor rear-seat legroom. So John Hall’s team examined a range of wheelbase sizes between 106in (2,690mm) and 110in (2,795mm), finally settling on a size of 108in – or more precisely 2,745mm, because Land Rover was actually working to metric dimensions despite its continued traditional use of imperial measurements in model names. Two of those inches were to be inserted between the front axle and the front bulkhead, creating larger footwells for the front seat passengers and improving the vehicle’s crash performance as well. The other 6in (150mm) were to be used mainly to increase legroom for rear-seat passengers, with a little extra for the boot area as well.

So this was going to be a large vehicle – far too large to have the monocoque construction that was universal in the luxury car market where Land Rover hoped it would succeed. Instead, it would need a traditional Land Rover ladder-frame chassis with a separate bodyshell mounted on top of it, although that bodyshell could be more modern in structure than the one on the existing Range Rover.

Project Pegasus, 1988–1990

At the end of 1988, the amalgamation of the Rover and Land Rover engineering teams began, and for a large part of 1989 the new Range Rover programme was more or less on hold while the Rover Group sorted itself out. Projected costs had already started to escalate alarmingly, and so this pause allowed the designers and engineers some time to think about how best to proceed.

It was in this fallow period that the project for the new Range Rover took on yet another new name. The project itself did not change: it was simply that Discovery had been chosen as the name for the Project Jay family 4×4 in the first few months of 1989. So the Range Rover, known up to that point as Project Discovery, now became Project Pegasus. It continued to tick over with Bob Allsopp in charge until Rover Group Chief Executive John Towers formally appointed John Hall as Project Director and authorized him to assemble a dedicated team to develop a new Range Rover. According to Hall, this was probably in late 1989, or possibly early 1990.

So the Project Pegasus team came together. John Hall appointed Mike Pendry as Chief Engineer. Working to him were Bob Allsopp as Chief Engineer, Vehicle Development, and Frank Bolderstone as Chief Engineer, Vehicle Layout. There were then eight ‘component’ teams, each under a team leader who reported to Mike Pendry. These teams covered chassis, body-in-white, body hardware, lower trim, upper trim, electrical (two teams) and powertrain systems (with sub-teams for engine, transmission and engine management systems).

In the beginning, only small numbers of engineers and designers were involved with Project Pegasus, and John Hall remembered that he had a china model of Pegasus, the winged horse, in his office. He found it a very useful tool for focusing the attention of the team on what the new Range Rover was all about. However, the small team gradually grew larger and larger, and at its peak the Pegasus team would consist of between 250 and 300 people (the number varies according to who is telling the story). For Land Rover, this was a far larger team than had ever been assembled before, although by motor industry standards it was a small team to deliver a product of such great ambition and importance as the new Range Rover.

Project 38A, 1990–1994

For the first couple of years, Land Rover was successful in keeping secret most of the work it was doing towards a new Range Rover. However, customer clinics, in which groups of potential buyers were shown pictures or mock-ups of the new vehicle without being told what it was, had begun to raise the project’s public profile. The name of Pegasus had also leaked out to the media. Nobody is sure how, but there was a briefing for component suppliers in July 1990 and shortly after that, the first hints were made to UK police forces about the new vehicle. As John Hall remembered:

Pegasus was really a great name for motivating the team and, you know, getting excitement, but unfortunately… people outside the business – either through talking to people within Rover or talking to our supplier base – also found it a very interesting and exciting name, and we started getting a lot of pressure from journalists. So we decided to change the name of the project to the name of the building that we worked at up at Solihull.

In fact the Pegasus team was based in two adjoining buildings, Building 38A being their studio and design headquarters, while Building 38 next door was the workshop. From mid-1990, the new Range Rover became Project 38A, and, continued John Hall, ‘that was tremendous because, you know, “Project 38A” sort of goes … whoof, very boring!’

Project 38A then remained the codename for the new Range Rover right through until production began in 1994, and was never formally changed. However, in later years many people at Land Rover began to call the model a P38A, and later still this became corrupted to P38. Interestingly, UK police forces would always refer to the second-generation Range Rover as Pegasus, the name by which it was introduced to them in 1990.

THE KEY ELEMENTS

Chassis

Once the new model’s wheelbase size had been established as 108in (2,745mm), design was able to progress. Chassis engineering was entrusted to a team led by John Kellett, and unsurprisingly, the chassis frame took shape as a traditional ladder-frame type with box-section side members. Some cross-members were also of box-section construction, but others were tubular, and wherever possible, the designers did what they could to save weight while maintaining robustness. Along their length, the side members had graduated thickness, and therefore stiffness, to provide good crash deformation characteristics. In plan view, they also tapered in much more at the front than on any other existing Land Rover chassis.

The new chassis frame, viewed here from the back, was quite different from that of the existing Range Rover, with much more curvature of the side members in plan view.

Overall, the new chassis finished up stiffer than that of the first-generation Range Rover, with thicker metal everywhere. This did put plenty of weight low down, but that was important because it lowered the centre of gravity of what would inevitably be quite a tall vehicle, and so helped the on-road handling and off-road stability.

Packaging of the mechanical components was carefully arranged to give them maximum protection in off-road use and against collision damage.

For some years North American regulations had included some guidelines about low-speed impact damage, stipulating that minor parking knocks should not cause damage to safety-related items such as lights. Some car manufacturers had met these by using ‘stroker’ bumpers, which were mounted on telescopic struts and would move back in a controlled way under impact before returning to their original position.

The new Range Rover team investigated these at an early stage, but eventually rejected them. Instead, they developed deformable ‘crush cans’. These were essentially metal boxes at the front of the chassis behind the bumper, which absorbed impacts in a controlled way and were easily and cheaply replaceable. Land Rover customers first saw them on the revised first-generation Range Rovers and Discoverys introduced in March 1994. On the first-generation Range Rovers, their ends were covered by very visible plastic ‘buffers’, but on the new model they would be concealed behind the bumper and front apron.

Suspension

Getting the necessary ride quality was not an easy job. During the Project Discovery period, the engineers did investigate an independent front suspension. Meanwhile, they also began to look at ways of decoupling the axles from the body-shell to improve both ride and refinement, and decided that the most promising option was an air suspension system. Some luxury cars (such as Lincoln in the USA) already had such a system, but it was new to Land Rover and would have to be designed and developed from the ground up.

The air suspension, seen here on the front axle, used air-filled rubber bags as the springing medium instead of conventional steel springs.

At one stage, both independent front suspension and air suspension were under investigation together. Engineer Graham Silvers remembered two ‘mule’ prototypes from around 1990–91 that had both. However, the independent front suspension compromised off-road ability too much, and the tight project deadlines meant that the team had to abandon that line of development and move on. Independent front suspension would have to wait until an advanced electronic control system made all-round independent air suspension feasible for the third-generation Range Rover in 2001. So the suspension engineers now aimed to get better ride refinement by developing lighter beam axles and reducing the weight of other unsprung elements in the suspension.

The great advantage of air suspension was that the vehicle would actually ride on four columns of compressed air, each contained within a rubber bag between the axle and the main structure. Not only would the ride be softer than with traditional steel springs, but the passenger cabin would be quieter because these columns of air would insulate it from road noise.

The new system was developed in conjunction with Dunlop, who already manufactured air suspension systems for trucks and buses. But Land Rover decided to add to it a sophisticated ride-height adjustment system that would allow the vehicle to adapt to a variety of situations. There would be a normal ride height, a slightly lower one to improve handling and aerodynamics at speed, and an ultra-low one to make embarkation and disembarkation easier from a vehicle which was, after all, quite high off the ground. Then there would be a fourth one to lift the body higher for off-road work, and a fifth one that would push the wheels downwards in search of contact with the ground if the vehicle bellied out and lost traction while off-road.

All this would be controlled by sophisticated electronics, which were again developed in conjunction with an outside supplier. The whole system was a complete departure for Land Rover, and John Hall recognized the risks attached to introducing so much new technology at the same time. So he argued for the air suspension to be incorporated into the existing Range Rover as early as possible, in order to give Land Rover as much experience as possible of the system in service.

It was a good thing that he did. Air suspension was slated for introduction on the existing Range Rover in autumn 1991, but the system failed its final reliability tests that July. A number of vehicles had already been built with it for the press launch, which was promptly cancelled, and it was a further developed version of the system that entered production a year later for the Vogue SE and new long-wheelbase Vogue LSE models. So by the time the new Range Rover was introduced in autumn 1994, air suspension had been in production for two years and Land Rover knew far more about it than they would otherwise have done.

Styling

With their duties on Project Jay coming to an end, the Land Rover styling team were able to make a start on proposals for the new Range Rover during 1988. Their task was never going to be an easy one, not least because it was constrained by existing customer perceptions of what a Range Rover ‘should’ look like. ‘Whatever style we came out with was always going to be controversial,’ said John Hall after the launch some years later, his comment accompanied by a wry smile.

The Bertone design proposal was quite slick and would have worked well, apart from that very American front-end design.

It was, and still is, quite common practice in the motor industry to commission a specialist design studio to produce a visual proposal for a new model, and to compare this with the in-house proposals. If nothing else, it ensures that a manufacturer’s own design team is not out of step with trends elsewhere. So while the Land Rover stylists were sketching away at their premises in Shirley’s Drayton Road, Managing Director Tony Gilroy asked the Italian styling house of Bertone to put forward a proposal for the new Range Rover. Another proposal was commissioned from the celebrated British freelance team of John Heffernan and Ken Greenly. This meant that there would be multiple different proposals, from which the very best could be chosen.

It was probably in the late summer of 1988 that the stylists made a selection of ten different design proposals and turned them into full-size two-dimensional renderings. These were then lined up for review at Drayton Road – a great barn of a place, which lent itself well to the job. The ten proposals ranged from minimum-change designs that looked much like the existing production model, to more extreme suggestions that included a one-box MPV-like design that dated from 1986 and the time of the Ibex project.

Theme B from Land Rover’s own design studio was the one selected for development. Details would change, but it was recognizably the ancestor of the production vehicle.

Two different stepped waistline styles were tried on Theme C, again by Land Rover’s own design team.

This full-size model appears to be an earlier version of the Theme C design, without the stepped waistline.

From all these, a provisional selection was agreed; five designs were turned into scale models, and three of those were then turned into full-size ‘clays’. Two came from Land Rover itself, and the third was the Bertone proposal. They were presented to the Rover Board in October 1988 (the date on documents submitted for the review is 29 October). Bertone’s proposal – Theme A in those presented to the Rover Board – had a most American-looking front end, allied to clean lines that were typical of the Italian design house. Themes B and C were by Land Rover’s own stylists, with a stepped waistline on Theme C, but it was the less unconventional Theme B that gained the Board’s approval.

Further refinement of the selected theme had reached this stage by December 1989. The rendering was by Mike Sampson.

That final choice of design theme was made while the new Range Rover was still being developed as Project Discovery, and just a few months before it was renamed Project Pegasus. Although the basic shape would not now change, it would be developed in detail by a styling team working under George Thomson, who had been responsible for the styling of the award-winning Discovery. Among the details that would evolve – and cause a great deal of difficulty along the way – was the design of the headlamps (see panel). There was also a change to the roof after the full-size fibreglass styling model had been put alongside a current-production Range Rover for comparison. As stylist Mike Sampson remembers, ‘the roof looked too thin’ – and so it was raised by 15mm (just over ½in), giving not only better definition to the outside lines, but also bringing extra headroom inside.

An important part of the styling brief for the new model was to ensure that it was instantly recognizable as a Range Rover, and to that end Thomson and his team knew that they would have to retain a number of key styling features, which, according to market research, the public identified as Range Rover characteristics. Among these were the raised outer sections of the bonnet – usually referred to as ‘castellations’ – and the strong horizontal grille bars. Also important was the so-called ‘floating roof’, which was created by painting the roof in the body colour but using blacked-out window pillars all round so that the roof appeared to float above the lower body.

While Thomson and his team worked on the detail of the new styling, the basic shape was being tested out at customer clinics. Here, potential buyers of the new vehicle were asked about their requirements in a luxury 4×4, and were then shown a concept sketch of the new Range Rover (which was, of course, not identified as such) and asked for their reactions.

The body-in white, a more conventional structure than the one on the original Range Rover.

John Hall has admitted that he was very sceptical about these customer clinics. He argued that they tended to lead car makers into a lowest common-denominator mentality, which in turn produced bland cars. However, he remembered two key events from this period, both of them at clinics held in France. On the first occasion, the customers had been asked what they would look for in a luxury 4×4, and the answers had come up as an almost perfect picture of what Land Rover had in mind for the new Range Rover. So, feeling very pleased with themselves, the Land Rover team presented their concepts of the new vehicle – only to be told that this was definitely not what the customers had in mind! On the second occasion, one potential (French) buyer suggested that the concept had erred too much towards the luxury car and too far from the 4×4. His verdict was more useful, and very memorable: he suggested that Land Rover needed to ‘give it some Wellingtons’!

The final styling was signed off in spring 1990, but a few details continued to evolve. Aerodynamic testing, for example, led to a small ‘ledge’ being added to each E-pillar, just above the waistline, where it supposedly made an important contribution to the Range Rover’s stability at speed. The decision to abandon the planned ‘stroker’ bumpers seems to have been made in this period, too, and it led to further detail changes. Associated adjustments left the top of the rear bumper lower down, and rather less neatly integrated into the lines of the body sides. At the rear, plastic corner fillets were added to disguise the mismatch; the trick is obvious when pointed out, but good enough not to be obvious otherwise.

HEADLAMP DESIGN

The Range Rover design theme chosen for further development at the end of 1988 incorporated rectangular headlamps. These were perfectly in keeping with the overall design theme, but there were concerns within Land Rover that they were a step too far away from the familiar ‘face’ of the existing Range Rover with its round headlamps. These concerns were well founded: at the 1994 press launch of the second-generation model, several journalists asked why the round lamps had not been retained.

A lot of work was done on headlamp design. This was a proposal from late 1988, with 7in (17.8cm) outboard lamps and 5.75in (14.6cm) inboard lamps.

George Thomson had confirmed many years before that the single round lamps did not work well with the new shape. Even though they looked fine in two-dimensional sketches, in practice there were difficulties in integrating them with the rounded front corners of the new vehicle, and from some angles they simply did not look right.

Even so, the design team did look at several alternative headlamp designs before settling on the production style. By late 1988 they were looking at paired round headlamps, one with a 7in (17.8cm) diameter and the other with a 5¾in (14.6cm) diameter. During 1989 there were sketches to illustrate paired 5¾in round lamps, paired square lamps (which looked very American in style), and even single round lamps as used on the first-generation Range Rover.

Early 1989 saw these proposals for rectangular headlamps. A standard production Range Rover of the time was used for comparison purposes.

Yet another proposal with lamps of two different sizes, this one dated from 1989.

The various alternative headlamp styles remained under investigation into 1990, when the production design was finally settled. Undoubtedly a factor in the retention of the rectangular lamps was that such designs were fashionable at the time, and that using them therefore hinted at use of the latest technology! Even then, there remained an undercurrent of discontent with the design, and it was modified for the 2000 model-year Range Rovers to incorporate blackout ‘masks’, which gave the impression of two round lamps with different sizes.

The problem had still not been resolved by June 1990, when Mike Samspon sketched up this front end showing single round headlamps, like those of the existing production Range Rover.

A direct comparison: single round and rectangular lamps were tried out on this full-size mock-up.

Interior Design

There had been quite a lot of discussion about making the new Range Rover into a seven-seater during the mid-1980s. People carriers (MPVs, or mini-vans) were becoming increasingly popular, and their use of flexible seating seemed an attractive trend to follow. It was certainly this thinking that had been behind that radical proposal back in 1986 to style the new Range Rover as a single-box design. However, the people-carrier idea was ruled out after the October 1988 styling review, and the design team settled on a more conventional five-seat estate car approach. Even then, the idea did not go away, and engineers Graham Silvers and Malcolm Ainsley remembered that the project team looked into the possibility of a rearward-facing occasional seat in the load area to increase the number of passengers that could be carried. The idea was abandoned on the grounds that there was not enough room.