RANGE ROVER

Last crawled date: 1 year, 9 months ago

The Rover Company (originator of the Land Rover marque) was experimenting with a larger model than the Land Rover Series in 1951, when the Rover P4-based two-wheel-drive "Road Rover" project was developed by Gordon Bashford.[2] This was shelved in 1958 and the idea lay dormant until 1966, when engineers Spen King and Bashford set to work on a new model.[3]
The first Range Rover prototype was built in 1967 with plate number SYE 157F. The design of the Range Rover was finalised in 1969. Twenty-six Velar-badged engineering development vehicles were built between 1969 and 1970 and were road registered with the number plates YVB151H through to YVB177H.[4]
Though being chassis no. 3, YVB 153H is believed to have been the first off the production line as a vehicle in that colour was urgently required for marketing. (The Range Rover with chassis no. 1 was a green model with the registration "YVB 151H",[5] and is now on exhibition at Huddersfield Land Rover Centre, Huddersfield, West Yorkshire). The Velar name was derived from the Italian "velare" meaning to veil or to cover.[6] Range Rover development engineer Geof Miller used the name as a decoy for registering pre-production Range Rovers. The Velar company was registered in London and produced 40 pre-production vehicles that were built between 1967 and 1970.[6]
The Range Rover was launched in 1970. In the early 1970s, the Musée du Louvre in Paris exhibited a Range Rover as an "exemplary work of industrial design".[7]
In 1971, ex-Cream drummer Ginger Baker used the unproven Range Rover to drive from Algeria to Lagos, Nigeria to set up a recording studio and jam with Fela Kuti. Predating the Paris-Dakar rally the subsequent documentary is replete with such terrain, documenting the vehicle's endurance