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Onelife 22

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Unboxing of the All-New Discovery | A portrait of the sailing legend, Ben Ainslie | Look into the future of mobility and transportation | Copenhagen – probably the coolest city in the world?

ALL-NEW DISCOVERY OBJECT

ALL-NEW DISCOVERY OBJECT 08: CAMOUFLAGE There is a period in the development of a new car when its designers do their utmost to distract us from the features they’re most proud of. That particular period starts some way in to the car’s development when prototypes with something close to the final bodywork start testing on public roads, and lasts until the finished car has had the silk sheets pulled from it at a motor show. Before that, very early prototypes might wear the clothes of an existing model, subtly tailored to fit the dimensions of the new car beneath, and are hard to spot. But no Land Rover would ever be signed off without exhaustive testing in its final, finished form, too. That means an uncomfortable few months for the designers, who want to maximize the impact of that unveil moment and show us their work in the best possible light. The interest in the All-New Discovery vehicles exterior design was particularly intense. Over more than a quarter of a century its distinctive design language – the clamshell hood, the stepped ‘Alpine’ roof and the asymmetric tailgate, among other features – has become as iconic and recognizable as the old Defender models boxier forms. Press and customers alike were desperate to know how it would evolve. And it has evolved: more dynamic, and more aerodynamic too, its exterior form reflecting its high strength aluminum structure. “We’ve made designing the camouflage a hobby,” says Andy Wheel. “For the latest Range Rover we were inspired by the ‘dazzle graphics’ on early battleships, and for the Range Rover Evoque Convertible we used cartoon human figures. For the new Discovery we took a barcode and distorted it wildly.” “There’s a point in the testing process,” adds Alex Heslop, the Chief Engineer, “where we have to run the cars on the public road without conventional camouflage covering whole sections of the car.” As already mentioned, early prototypes wear the old model shape as camouflage. Next comes the heavy camouflage over the new shape, but this “can have the unwanted effect of masking things like wind noise in high-speed testing.” So finally light camouflage is applied over the new shape. “The barcode disguise is just a film applied to the real panels. The shape of the car is unaffected. You’re looking at the finished car, but the camouflage is brilliant at stopping you seeing it.” But as we now know, Gerry McGovern and his team kept the final car very close to that original Discovery Vision Concept. “If you really wanted to know what was under the camo you could just have looked at that,” says Andy Wheel. “The new Discovery was hiding in plain sight all along.” FIND OUT MORE about the All-New Discovery at landroverusa.com 52

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Land Rover

Land Rover Magazine 39

 

Land Rover Magazine showcases stories from around the world that celebrate inner strength and the drive to go above and beyond

Land Rover stands for not only the most capable premium vehicles, but a state of mind where a sense of curiosity, exploration and wonder informs all of life’s adventures. Encounter this throughout the latest issue of Land Rover Magazine, from meeting a herd of Ice Age survivors on the Dutch coast with the Land Rover Discovery, to the most innovative sustainable architecture on a Californian journey with the Range Rover Evoque

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