Rant Archives - Page 20 of 21 - OVALNEWS.com - Always fanatical; Occasionally interesting Land Rover & Range Rover News

An idiosyncratic review of the 2011 Range Rover Autobiography – Intro & Part 1: TFT-LCD Instrument Cluster #rangerover

We’ll start this one off with a quote from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off:

It is so choice. If you have the means, I highly recommend picking one up.

I was fortunate enough to pickup my 2011 Range Rover Autobiography a few weeks ago after ordering it back in September with no definite ETA.

In a word – Awesome.

It’s about as close to a bespoke Range Rover as you can get in the US and it really feels like one. The full leather trim feels both way upscale & the little differences in the leather or the way the trim goes together give it a real hand made quality. The 510HP engine finally gives the Range Rover what it should always have had a Rolls Royce like – effortless power supply. It seems in almost any situation, when you put your foot down, the Range Rover responds immediately. Then on top of all that there are all the new technological gadgets that a Range Rover never really had before, and while a generation behind Mercedes or BMW, it finally feels like a modern vehicle.

I’ve had a 1995 P38A, ‘03 Range Rover HSE, ‘06 Range Rover Supercharged & an ‘08 Range Rover Supercharged, so I can talk with first-hand authority on what’s changed, what’s better & what’s worse. And that’s really just what this review will be. You can go to any other site and read a regular review that goes on and on about the normal stuff and lists standard features.

In fact, here are a couple right here:

http://www.carmagazine.co.uk/Drives/Search-Results/First-drives/Range-Rover-44-TDV8-2011-CAR-review/

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/car-manufacturers/land-rover/8089617/Range-Rover-Autobiography-long-term-report.html

That said, this will be a way for me to both compliment and complain about the Range Rover.

And to start with that “revolutionary” LCD-TFT Instrument Cluster. For the 2010 refresh the Range Rover received a 12.3” TFT-LCD to replace the standard gauges – speedometer, tachometer, etc… Here’s what it looks like in the official PR video:

It’s definitely a neat feature and a real conversation piece for anyone seeing it for the first time. The images & text are very crisp, clear & bright – with only minimal washout from the sun at various angles. But after getting used to it, it doesn’t seem to be any better then actual gauges and is really what I believe just a field test for the hardware that they may use in the next Range Rover. You’d think with all that space on the screen, they could easily take advantage of it to display navigational arrows or even what’s playing on the stereo. But no, in normal use, it’s the two dials with a big empty black space between them.

As shown above, that’s the “normal” display – warnings/system settings will appear in the middle area when needed but for the most part that black area remains completely blank 99% of the time.

The funny thing here is that if you look at almost all of the brochure pictures available they show the display with the graphic of a Range Rover in that middle area like this, from the official website.

optoly_us_l322_n-032dk[1]

If you notice at the bottom of the display it shows Mud-Ruts and the other Terrain Response icons, the reason for that is because that Range Rover profile graphic is only displayed for a few seconds when turning on Terrain Response. Then it switches to a display like this:

This is the only time the power of the TFT-LCD is put to use and actually even more so when in Rock Crawl as in this shot below from the official website:

optoly_us_l322_a-panel[1]

I’ll just finish with something I noticed the marketing people are doing when describing the new system. And while I realize I’m nit-picking and the way they word it makes it valid but they like to say as on the website:

The new 12 inch TFT-LCD virtual instrument panel uses the same technology found in high-quality computer laptops and can be both personalized and adapted to suit various driving conditions or personal preference.

And again in this very recent print ad below , they tout:

“TFT-LCD instrument cluster creates a new standard of customized driver information and control”

I guess you could say it’s customized in the sense that you can turn on and off a few options but for the most part, there isn’t really much to customize. Outside of what you previously(pre-2010) set through the main touchscreen – language, units, etc.., you can turn on/off the flashlight effect which can be seen in the previous picture where the road & engine speeds have a highlight on them while darkening the other numbers on the dial. And that’s really it – no option to display the audio system info or to display navigational prompts – I don’t even think there are any color options, not that I’d want any, just pushing “customizable” point.

And just to cover my bases, yes there are other settings there, but again there’s no reason any of those settings couldn’t be set through the touchscreen. I don’t see how turning on and off the HBA through the touchscreen really makes it customizable. And really, I guess they are there to give the right-hand steering wheel controller something to do.

And one more shot of the Forward Alert system in action, so you can see that they do actually use the in between section from time to time. When turned on(through the LCD, ha), Forward Alert will pop up the triangle warning and sound a chime if it senses you’re going to possibly collide with a vehicle in front of you. It’s actually really neat. There is a curve near where I live that when the situation is just right will cause it to go off every time I approach it, and that’s where I was when I took this picture – sorry it’s so blurry, but I think you’ll get the idea.

. ForwardWarning

So can anyone at Land Rover actually explain some of the customizable options? Will we ever see some software updates on the 2010/2011’s that will give us more functionality?

I’ll just close this one now and get back to the general feel of the 2011, all the little things they’ve added and tweaked are indicative of a Range Rover model at the end of it’s run – like they did with the 1995 Range Rover Classic interior & the 2001 Range Rover 4.6 chrome interior bits. This is also a sign of what should be a very solid truck with years of polish. I can’t say enough good things overall about this latest Range Rover, but they still do seem to be stuck at that 90% point – where if they just put in 10% more work, it would be perfect (for a Range Rover that is).

And up next, some little differences I’ve noticed…

Thanks for reading!

And one other video – something I filmed the other day – Starting the Range Rover:

Michael2011-02-25T18:31:39-05:00February 25, 2011|

2010 Range Rover Print Ads #rangerover

Happy New Year Everyone!

I’ve collected a few of the more recent Range Rover USA advertisements lately and just wanted to post them up for all to see. As you’ll notice, the first one, an earlier 2010 example, still has the Land Rover logo. While the two newer “Perfect Place” ads have switched to “Range Rover” branding, but do still list the landroverusa.com website as opposed to the rangeroverusa.com site.

And me being me, you know I can’t let the little details go – in this last ad for the USA, check out the steering wheel shot in the top middle, don’t worry, I’ll blow it up below:

Untitled-1

Right there, you can clearly see the “down” shift paddle, currently only found on the 8-speed TDV8 Range Rover, the one that also has the Rotary Drive Selector, the same Range Rover model that is not available in the US. I just figure since this is clearly a US ad, couldn’t they have stuck to US only options?

One other little rant on this – I always love the way they used to reference Range Rover as just that, without a “the". In that last ad, they did it again – “ to applaud Range Rover”. However in that second ad above, “the” is back. They should just be confident and stick with it, it could have been easily re-worded to work.

Michael2011-01-04T10:00:00-05:00January 4, 2011|

Who exactly is watching this Evoque slideshow on YouTube?? #rangeroverevoque

After seeing other slideshow type YouTube videos, I decided to create a simple one, with just the official Range Rover Evoque photos released at the time, I added in a YouTube provided soundtrack and put the video up on September 21st.

As of December 6th, it has over 10,000 views – which I think is actually pretty crazy, I know I’d prefer to see the actual pictures instead of something like this. But that’s not why I’m writing this today. It’s the actual analytics on the video from YouTube, specifically the demographics:

While in no way scientific and really just a sample of YouTube viewers; I wonder how much this goes along with what ~~Land Rover~~ Range Rover is seeing in regard to who they’re targeting it for.

Below are the breakdowns for Women vs. Men.

Again, I don’t know the general demographic for YouTube users, but 10,000 views seems like a good size sample for a car slideshow.

Anyway, I found it interesting…

Michael2010-12-06T09:39:00-05:00December 6, 2010|

Range Rover Evoque, Pulse of the City, the City Shapers & Pay per Tweet?

I’ve wanted to write about the marketing they’re doing for the Evoque for a while now. They just keep coming up with new things, like a twitpic scavenger hunt for the Evoque wireframes in LA before the big reveal next week. I just wasn’t sure if I want to be critical of it or not and my mind has changed over time. So I’ll just break it down a little.

With regard specifically to the Pulse of the City app – at first I didn’t get it but then I tried it out and created this cool visualization of a short trip the other day. It’s a simple app you install on your iOS device, you hit start at the beginning of your trip and end when you reach your destination. It uses the live GPS data to plot points along the way, then it emails you a visualization of your trip, as seem below. I had thought it was just for the “City Shapers” but it’s more then that.

It’s a neat idea with a cool personalized product at the end, you should check it out.

Now on to the City Shapers, this I’m not as cool with. It’s described as:

40 influential names from ten cities, working in fashion, design, music and film who will collaborate with Range Rover over the next 12 months to launch the highly anticipated Range Rover Evoque.

When I heard this the first time, I didn’t think much of it in the way of paid product endorsement. But then the news started appearing about how these celebrities are getting paid to tweet about the Evoque to their many followers. I know it’s not a new thing, and getting paid for things like this is becoming more common, but I just don’t think it’s transparent enough. Using Twitter to broadcast about a product and not have a clear “Promotional considerations provided by” tag really seems like it would hurt Twitter in the long run? And it seems like it would be disingenuous to the actual followers to just be getting basically commercial messages without any notification

Here you can see an actual promoted follow suggestion from @RangeRoverUSA:

That is clearly marked that it’s promoted, and I have no problem with that. But then you have tweets from @bevysmith, one of the New York City Shapers. It’s not as clear as to whether or not she’s being paid to mention the Evoque.

On researching this, I found some great articles on the subject from people who write a lot better then I can, you should check them out:

Twitter: just another channel for celeb endorsement?

Range Rover use brand and consumer generated content to engage consumers about new models

And there was one tweet that I now can’t find!! The tweeter worded it very well on how this is a slippery slope between advertising and a true experience – when I find it, I’ll update this article.

And ~~Land Rover~~ Range Rover did clarify the program:

Range Rover this week announced that it has recruited 40 global “city shapers” to drive the new Range Rover Evoque car and be part of the Pulse of the City campaign. These people are all well known voices in their city and come from the fields of art, culture, film, music, fashion, TV in fact anywhere where they’ve made a mark in their own city. They have an interesting and often talked about point of view and appreciate the design thought that has gone in to producing the new Range Rover car.
Further to recent press speculation about celebrities being paid to tweet without acknowledging their association, Range Rover would like to reinforce the fact that at no time have its city shapers been paid just to tweet or endorse our products without acknowledgement. Each will be loaned a new Evoque and will then recount their experiences as part of the Pulse of the City campaign in their own ways. If Twitter is used, it is through their own choice, what they say is determined by them and will always be linked to Range Rover and the Pulse of the City campaign. All of our City Shapers have been announced on the Helloevoque.com .

So maybe that’s their out, if they aren’t actually paying them anything and just loaning the car, they don’t have to feel as guilty about it? The more transparent the better!!

Just going to close on some more criticism , I really think the Evoque turned out well and hope that it’s really successful for ~~Land Rover~~ Range Rover, but do you really think any of these City Shapers wouldn’t just have a real Range Rover? Like the just announced fifth City Shaper for New York City, New York Jets star cornerback Darrelle Revis, do you really think he’s showing up on game day in a little Evoque or a real Range Rover Autobiography? And calling back to the @bevysmith tweets above, being in NYC, how many people really do drive themselves? And how many of these City Shapers would actually drive themselves in NYC? Why not just use a Taxi or car service – do these Evoque’s come with a driver? And if you’re going to have a driver, wouldn’t they use a full size vehicle, sort of no compromise? And I know they’re really marketing it as a city car, but driving in the city is never like the driving in their videos of car-less London. To me, you drive in the city if you have to, not because you want to.

Just my opinion!

Press releases to follow:

(more…)

Michael2010-11-11T20:42:23-05:00November 12, 2010|

Just some more notes on the Land Rover / Range Rover branding split #landrover #rangerover

rr-na

When Range Rovers first became officially available in the US back in 1987, the name of the car company here was, Range Rover of North America – prior to that, you could get Range Rovers, but I believe they were all grey market. Here’s an ad from 1984, showing they were available.

Anyway, back to the focus of the post, just more notes on the separation that’s happening between Land Rover & Range Rover as brands. From the slow removal of Land Rover badges from the Range Rovers to the branding they’re using on the web. The actual Land Rover website has two distinct looks and logos depending on what models you’re looking at:

lr-web web-rr

The thing to notice there is that “Range Rover” logo in the upper left of the page. It’s those separate Land Rover / Range Rover logos that are showing up more often. Here’s the cover & last page from the iPad version of the OneLife magazine.

onelife

I didn’t notice all this extra Range Rover specific branding until the Evoque launch, I probably just wasn’t paying close enough attention prior, but now I can’t miss it. Especially when those first Evoque pictures were missing any type of Land Rover branding – a Land Rover badge did appear on the Paris show car.

And finally, back to that OneLife magazine/app, they seem to be very careful in talking about Land Rovers and Range Rovers as independent items which seems like a lot of PR editing.

Directly from the Ratan Tata article:

Tata wants to broaden the Land Rover and Range Rover model range and further differentiate the two brands to attract more customers to the business.

I just wonder what that means exactly? Is this going to be a Toyota/Lexus arrangement? We currently only have two Land Rover models in the US. If this grows with something like the still secret L486 project, where do the Land Rover models fit in? Why not lose them and go all Range Rover? Are they going to be a lot cheaper? There will be a Range Rover at the $40,000 level with the Evoque and I know it’s not the LR4 segment, but what’s going to be the differentiator? Is it just to help people with the confusion between LR & RR that happens at times?

Can someone explain?

lr-rr

Michael2010-10-31T00:02:56-04:00November 8, 2010|

Previous 192021 Next