Land Rover's LRX Abomination, Now in Black
In the eternal quest for growth and profits, Land Rover is taking their image– which is one of the most focused in the auto industry– and stretching it to include yet another new soft-roader. Yes, rivet counters will recognize this as the same Land Rover LRX concept that we saw in Detroit, only spray painted black. It still looks pretty slick. But the press release just reeks of brand erosion. "The positioning of LRX could be described as moving subtly from traditional SUV to crossover, with its more car-like appearance and dynamics that are sportier and on-road biased." Screw that. Land Rover should be off-road biased. Although the LRX "promises the widest breadth of capability in the class" that means little when you're comparing its mud-plugging talents to a Honda CR-V's. Land Rover claims they're trying to gauge public interest with this model, but if you ask me, it's just Range Rover Sport redux.Hopefully, the brand's new owners will abandon this senseless pursuit of the BMW X3/Infiniti EX/Mercedes GLK/Audi Q5/Acura RDX, etc.
Immensely bored law student. I've also got 3 dogs.
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oh phew! it wasn't just me who felt compelled to throw up in my mouth upon seeing this monstrosity (now in black!). gotta feel (a bit) sorry for the twonks at tata for buying this discarded fomoco corpse ...
I still enjoy the rare glimpse of Land Rover Defender 90's and older Series Land Rovers but none of the others ever did anything for me. It seems the brand has just lost its way and that's unfortunate.
Gotta say it, this concept is sexy. Even though it's brand dilution and a dumb segment and yada yada...this thing is a beautiful concept.
Let me tell you who is happy about this - Jeep and Toyota. Jeep is happy because they are now the ONLY players with a real SUV image. Toyota is happy because I am quite sure that more Toyota buyers are created by Landy marketing than Landy buyers. Toyota should butch up the FJ, or bring back one of the real Land Cruisers to replace one of the other midsize SUV's. This would put a serious nail in the Landy brand image, and likely help Toyota against Tata in the long run.