2020 Range Rover SV Coupe: Dropping Doors, Like Before
As luxury-car makers mount hostile incursions into Range Rover’s territory with their own SUVs, it’s entirely natural that Land Rover returns the favor by sending out raiding parties of its own. Ones like this, the new, range-topping SV Coupe version of the Range Rover.
Beneath the dazzle disguise, this winter-testing prototype can be seen to have a far longer front door than the standard Range Rover, and at what would be the trailing edge of the rear door is a faux shutline incorporated into the shape-hiding wrap. If you’re wondering what it looks like inside, a top-down image of the interior already has been released.
While this opulent Range Rover coupe will be somewhat aimed at buyers of grand-touring cars such as the Aston Martin DB11 and the Bentley Continental GT, we can safely predict that it will keep a similar level of off-road ability as the regular Range Rover. Nor is it an inappropriate departure for the brand, with the original Range Rover having been launched as a two-door way back in 1970. By the time imports to the States began some 17 years later, only the four-door version was available. More recently, the baby Range Rover Evoque has also been sold as a coupe, although that model was discontinued in America for 2018.
The new SV coupe is being engineered by Jaguar Land Rover’s Special Vehicle Operations division, which also created the high-performance Range Rover Sport SVR, the ultra-luxurious Range Rover SVAutobiography, and is about to launch the zombie-apocalypse-defying Discovery SVX. The coupe will sit at the top of the range, and with just 999 units planned for global consumption it likely will be among the most expensive Range Rover products so far (the four-door SVAutobiography starts at just over $200k). We should expect a correspondingly top-end powerplant, most likely JLR’s long-serving supercharged V-8.
According to reports in the United Kingdom, the company recently registered the Range Stormer name, which was used on the 2004 two-door concept that previewed the original Range Rover Sport. There was some thought that the name might be used here, but Land Rover went with SV branding instead.
The arrival of another luxury variant means that the Range Rover–fication of the Land Rover brand is set to continue apace, with the Evoque, Velar, Sport, and Range Rover being joined by this new two-door. By contrast, the company currently produces just two vehicles that only carry Land Rover branding: the Discovery and the underwhelming Discovery Sport.
