THIRD ACT
On a cold and frosty evening in November 2001 at the Design Museum in London, a new chapter in luxury motoring was beginning That evening, Land Rover pulled the wraps off the third-generation Range Rover to a VIP audience and at the same time made the boldest statement yet about the brand: Land Rover was no longer about utilitarian functionality, but about upmarket motoring, the new Range Rover being the absolute epitome of that.
It was the first entirely new model to be launched under the Green Oval since it was suckered into Ford’s Premier Automotive Group alongside Jaguar, Aston Martin and Volvo, but its gestation wasn’t that straightforward as the new Range Rover had been in development since 1994. It was first and foremost, a BMW initiative and was the first vehicle on the drawing board when BMW bought Rover.
The new Range Rover was a huge break from tradition and would be the first Land Rover to feature monocoque construction, along with advanced electronic architecture.
The initial codename for
