[masmole]

My first Land Rover product after buying nothing but mostly German and a few Japanese cars in my lifetime.


It certainly has its quirks, but I expected nothing less from a British marque. Very happy with this decision so far. I'm loving this new ride.


Ride compliance is unexpectedly good despite the 22" wheels. It's not quite as luxurious as our Q7 but it does offer a nice balance of comfort and sportiness. Steering weight feels good and not overly numb or over-boosted, and the chassis is very willing to tackle the corners unlike Land Rover products of old that I've had the pleasure of driving. This is definitely not your father's Range Rover! The P380 supercharged V6 is relatively benign and even sounds "lazy" when driving sedately around town but does respond eagerly to some prodding with the throttle pedal. It's quite fun to drive for a smallish crossover and I suspect it will entertain me for a few years as a daily driver. The "barometer" for comparison are various RS, AMG, and M cars I've had in the past, and despite the power disadvantage the Velar has compared to such cars, it's quite fun in its own right. Its striking good looks inside and out, luxurious appointments, and cutting-edge tech certainly contribute to this. Speaking of tech, let me just mention one little niggle: as impressive as JLR's showcasing of its latest touchscreen infotainment wizardry in the new Velar, it is only betrayed by connectivity that is still limited to 3G via AT&T. Really JLR? This is 2017. Other car manufacturers have been on board with 4G LTE since 2015 or maybe even earlier! Perhaps they're too cheap to implement a 4G LTE antenna and chipset in the infotainment? I understand that a cost-cutting line must be drawn somewhere, but sheesh! Anyhow, not really a big deal since at least there's an option to tether car connectivity to your personal smartphone's cellular data service via wifi.


Going to load up the family tomorrow and do a short day road trip to Michigan to put her through her paces. Child seats fit well and seem to have enough leg room so as to not encourage too much seat-back kicking from our 2 front-facing toddlers. It won't be long before they wreck the nice light oyster leather with crumbled cheerios, spilt beverages, and barf... but at least it will look good for the first few months.


If anyone is in the market and have any questions about the Velar, I'll be glad to help you with answers.


And now some pics....

 

[masmole]

Yes, it's Corris grey. First one delivered at my dealer. It arrived with 6 other Velars but this was their only FE so far.

Yes, it did come with the activity key. Not sure if I'll ever use it, but cool feature nonetheless.

I paid MSRP as agreed upon when I placed my deposit way back in February when it was first announced. Monroney sticker shows $91,668. Only additional cost options listed were SiriusXM ($615), Interior Car Care Kit ($59), and a "Premium Protection+Storage package" ($699). The latter option includes a set of 4 of these fancy Range Rover branded rubber mats as shown in the pic below, a LR branded collapsible cargo organizer, rear cargo net, a pair of ratchet tie-down straps, and a front windshield sunshade. Now that I think about it, that's probably a rip-off for just a set of mats and some cheap accessories but I took them anyway since Weathertech doesn't make custom-fit floorliners for the Velar yet and I needed all-weather mats sooner than later.

 

[masmole]

The dual screens are great to look at, but operation is initially very confusing and counterintuitive. Though this is the best-looking infotainment I've ever experienced, the whole user-interface is definitely not as well-designed as the systems found in the german cars. Example: why are there 2 different "settings" icons on each screen even when both of them are on? They could've easily consolidated this to make the functionality of the dual displays more cohesive. Perhaps software updates in the future will clean up the UI, but even if they don't, once you get used to it and figure out where all the settings are buried in the menu systems, it's not so bad. It will definitely take a lot of trial and error and delving into every submenu to find out what's inside each one to finally make everything work the way you want. You'd think that JLR would've learned some lessons from Android and Apple iOS by now, but perhaps since they don't support either Android Auto and Apple CarPlay for the moment, I guess they haven't.

If I were to give JLR's new "InControl Touch Pro Duo" a scores (out of 10)...
Form, presentation and visual esthetic: 9
Execution and User interface: 5

I do have one more observation to add... while the InControl Touch Pro Duo's dual displays are quick and very responsive to inputs, scrolling and other finger gestures, I'm somewhat disappointed that the interactive driver's display behind the steering wheel is not. Using the steering-wheel buttons, there is an annoying lag to inputs when I'm trying to navigate the deep menu systems to change settings like driver assist functions, lighting, cruise control, instrument display and HUD configurations, and redundant functions from the infotainment system. Sometimes, I press a button and it doesn't respond at all, or worse yet, it sometimes triggers the wrong button despite my careful and deliberate attempts to hit the right one. It's tedious and frustrating to say the least! Luckily, once you set most of these items the way you want, you seldom have to make any more big changes so you hopefully don't have to deal with this lag too frequently. It's so bad that it almost makes me think that something might be wrong with my particular unit. When I take it in for service, I will check out other Velars they have in stock to see if they are any different.

 

[masmole]

thanks!

Yes, I love the design of the Land Rover branded rubber floor mats too. But like most oem floormats (not just JLR but from my experience, Audi & BMW as well) they offer poor coverage of not just the driver area but the outside edges of the all the areas as well, which would not fare well when melted snow/ice from your shoe in the winter pools on the mat when you're driving. I've found Weathertech floorliners to work best for good coverage and collection of fluids. Mercedes seem to be the only ones of late that have adopted them as oem and just rebadged Weathertechs with Mercedes logos.

When I started this thread, Weathertech floorliners were not available for the Velar yet. I signed up for their notifications list and just last friday received an email that their laser-fit floorliners as well as their trunk liners are now available for the Velar. I ordered them right away and should receive them today. For those interested: http://www.weathertech.com/land-rover_range-rover/2018/range-rover-velar/floorliner-digitalfit/