Is Range Rover Turning Its Sleekest SUV into a Wagon Sorta Thing?

The Range Rover Velar looks to be gearing up for its most radical change yet. New spy photos just surfaced of the most road-going Range Rover ever undergoing testing, revealing its new body shape.

But rather than being a squished and elongated version of the already road-biased Range Rover Sport, the next-gen Velar appears to be taking a new form as a stretched-out, high-riding wagon. The biggest change of all, though, is that it’ll be all electric.

JLR’s still pushing for electrification

Despite the EV market slowdown and waning interest, Jaguar-Land Rover is still moving forward with its electrification plans. That includes converting the Velar into an all-electric crossover.

For its second iteration, the Velar will utilize the automaker’s latest Electrified Modular Architecture. That’s the same one underpinning the production variant of the Jaguar 00 Concept.

Land Rover

Although details remain sparse, the spy photos at least give away the next Velar’s shape. While the current and outgoing Velar looks like a Range Rover Sport with its head squished down, the new Velar takes on more of a wagon-like appearance.

The move is likely to cater more to the lifted wagon trend, which remains a popular configuration. It’s the same niche that also gave us some notable past examples like Volvo’s Cross Country models, Audi allroad variants and the Mercedes-Benz E-Class All-Terrain. More recently, Volvo introduced the ES90, which looks similar in concept.

Land Rover

But because the Velar started life first as, well, a Range Rover, the model is moving in a reverse adaptation, becoming less SUV like and more sedan or wagon-like.

The most road-friendly Range Rover ever

The next Velar will most certainly be a source of controversy for fans of the model. Traditionalists will claim that the Range Rover is and is forever meant to be a high-riding, rugged and capable luxury SUV, as it’s always been.

Land Rover

Over the past several years, rumors began surfacing about Land Rover’s supposed interest in producing a Range Rover sedan. But those rumors have yet to come to fruition in any way.

The new Velar, however, looks to be moving closer to those aspirations more than ever. So, it’ll surely be ruffling the feathers of conventional Range Rover fans, as the Sport did when it came out back in the 2000s.

Land Rover

But to the surprise of those traditionalists, the Range Rover Sport went on to become the automaker’s best-selling model before the new Defender arrived.

Whether the new Velar can capture the same sort of success has yet to be determined. The previous Velar wasn’t a stellar seller. But it still did well enough globally to warrant a second-gen model.

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