Some still can’t believe it, but it’s true. The brand name Land Rover, a synonym for off-road, adventure, travel and incredible versatility, is disappearing. The realignment of manufacturer JLR no longer has room for the oval green-and-silver emblem.
There are things that stay with you all your life, or almost all your life. Sometimes it feels like an eternity, even though it was only a few years. But when you engage so intensely with something, or have had the most intense experiences with something, it can be very dominant in your memory. That is surely how the die-hard fans of the Landy feel: the fond, warm nickname for cars bearing the brand name Land Rover. Could you imagine the Defender ever disappearing? No. And the brand itself? Absolutely not. But that too has now happened.
The lovingly maintained oval, only gently changed over the decades, will no longer adorn any vehicle. At most sometimes still as a small “trust logo” on the outside, sometimes inside. The Land Rover brand, born as a model name for a Rover for agriculture, is, after 75 years, now history.
It seems to be part of an apparently indispensable trend for car manufacturers to give up their heritage lightly. Mercedes recently parted with one of its two Uhlenhaut 300 SLRs, VW has retired the Bulli in favour of the ID. Buzz and now has something that is meant to be, at most, a reminder of it. JLR is now cheerfully joining in and parting with its birth name in the hope of pulling off a realignment with it. After two bad years, this was presumably considered necessary.
A car brand must preserve its heritage
Klaus Zyciora, a successful VW chief designer, reminded us only the year before last how extremely important it is for a car brand to preserve its heritage, its brand core, and transform it into the future. No matter how contradictory that may be. He recalled the pure motorsport brand Porsche, associated with the smell of petrol and roaring engines, and its so-far successful strategy of continuing the 911 without destroying its heritage. In doing so, Zyciora said, one should sometimes resist the odd revolution so as not to lose the core of the brand or a model in favour of something fashionable and short-lived. The brand name is inseparably linked to the brand core. Just as “Land Rover” and “off-roader” are inseparably linked.
JLR – House of Brands
JLR now sees itself in future as a “House of Brands”, made up of the four brands Range Rover, Discovery, Defender and Jaguar. Range Rover takes on the role of luxury flagship, Discovery becomes the family-friendly brand, and for off-road duty the Defender lends its name. Jaguar’s direction is completely electric. The big cat drops its entire model range and starts over with three new models.
A great deal is being lost
JLR’s decision reminds me of what former near-CEO of BMW Wolfgang Reitzle once said to Jürgen Schrempp, former CEO of Mercedes-Benz, on a climbing trip: that it was the stupidest thing Schrempp ever planned, to turn Mercedes-Benz into DaimlerChrysler and no longer carry the Mercedes name in the brand. Today, many billions of D-Marks burned later, everyone knows how right he was.
© Photo: JLR