Post by racingteatray on Sept 11, 2020 14:09:30 GMT
Test-drove one of these for 40 mins or so around West London.
Can be summarised, to I'm sure nobody's surprise as "Right car, Wrong engine".
The one I drove was ex-LR fleet and had about 30k miles on the clock (leggy for a 19-plate) but still felt pretty much as new.
Being in R-Dynamic trim, the car drove pretty much as described here: themotorforum.co.uk/thread/1840/range-rover-velar, so I won't cover that again. Likewise my thoughts on the interior etc generally.
Suffice to say it was comfortable and relaxing, and didn't feel really much bigger than my current car. It is bigger, but that is offset by being higher up which gives you a better sense of where you are on the road. Rather than seeking out speed, I took it up from Battersea through Chelsea and the Boltons to Earls Court and back round to Fulham, trying it out on back streets and cut-throughs I know well to see if it felt horribly wide and unwieldy. Even took it through my local width-restrictor. All fine. So that's a tick.
HSE is very nice - it had lashings of black leather and a fixed glass roof (I'd want an opening one myself). And I tried out the Nav system to work out how long it would take me to get back to Battersea and it worked fine. At one point, quite unprompted (I'm not aware I pressed anything), the massage seats function activated. That was nice too. When it stopped, I worked out how to turn it back on.
But the P300 engine is an engine for people utterly uninterested in engines. I don't think any petrolhead would want it. It's powerful enough - in fact at first in traffic even in D (rather than S), with the sort of pedal pressure I'd normally apply in the GC, it rather lunged forward more than I expected making for not the smoothest of progress as I then had to stand on the brakes to avoid nutting the Range Rover Sport in front of me. In S, it fair goes for one so big. But at no point does it make any sort of noise that sounds even remotely enthusiastic, or indeed particularly smooth. It could be an 4-pot engine from some especially dreary repmobile. And oddly, given it is powerful, it never quite escapes the sense that the power is being extracted and put to work rather than measured out with ease. It lacks that lovely effortless pouring sensation you get at all times from a larger, more amply-cylindered petrol engine. And to be honest, I can't imagine why you'd pick it over the D300 version, which is a six-pot.
Apart from that, as you will see the car was in forum-favourite Byron Blue, which in fact is rather nice in the metal. Don't know if I'd choose it given the choice, but I did like it. It also had black wheels which I didn't like although they were of a design that I do.
This was an Approved Used car up for £45k.
Can be summarised, to I'm sure nobody's surprise as "Right car, Wrong engine".
The one I drove was ex-LR fleet and had about 30k miles on the clock (leggy for a 19-plate) but still felt pretty much as new.
Being in R-Dynamic trim, the car drove pretty much as described here: themotorforum.co.uk/thread/1840/range-rover-velar, so I won't cover that again. Likewise my thoughts on the interior etc generally.
Suffice to say it was comfortable and relaxing, and didn't feel really much bigger than my current car. It is bigger, but that is offset by being higher up which gives you a better sense of where you are on the road. Rather than seeking out speed, I took it up from Battersea through Chelsea and the Boltons to Earls Court and back round to Fulham, trying it out on back streets and cut-throughs I know well to see if it felt horribly wide and unwieldy. Even took it through my local width-restrictor. All fine. So that's a tick.
HSE is very nice - it had lashings of black leather and a fixed glass roof (I'd want an opening one myself). And I tried out the Nav system to work out how long it would take me to get back to Battersea and it worked fine. At one point, quite unprompted (I'm not aware I pressed anything), the massage seats function activated. That was nice too. When it stopped, I worked out how to turn it back on.
But the P300 engine is an engine for people utterly uninterested in engines. I don't think any petrolhead would want it. It's powerful enough - in fact at first in traffic even in D (rather than S), with the sort of pedal pressure I'd normally apply in the GC, it rather lunged forward more than I expected making for not the smoothest of progress as I then had to stand on the brakes to avoid nutting the Range Rover Sport in front of me. In S, it fair goes for one so big. But at no point does it make any sort of noise that sounds even remotely enthusiastic, or indeed particularly smooth. It could be an 4-pot engine from some especially dreary repmobile. And oddly, given it is powerful, it never quite escapes the sense that the power is being extracted and put to work rather than measured out with ease. It lacks that lovely effortless pouring sensation you get at all times from a larger, more amply-cylindered petrol engine. And to be honest, I can't imagine why you'd pick it over the D300 version, which is a six-pot.
Apart from that, as you will see the car was in forum-favourite Byron Blue, which in fact is rather nice in the metal. Don't know if I'd choose it given the choice, but I did like it. It also had black wheels which I didn't like although they were of a design that I do.
This was an Approved Used car up for £45k.
