Land Rover Design Director Gerry McGovern Interview

First introduced to the design director of Chrysler while still in high school, he was later sponsored by the brand at Lanchester Polytechnic, where he received a degree in industrial design. Following that, he attended the Royal College of Art in London, specializing in automotive design. Bouncing around through the years to various marques, which included a stint with Rover in the early 1980s, he returned to that nameplate in 2004.

Since then, he has been the visual architect of the brand, helping to move it from its standard leanings of the past to its newfound style and identity for the future. Recent Land Rover designs like the Range Rover Evoque are unmistakably different than before.

McGovern: Next year we will launch the new Range Rover. We are developing a whole new generation of vehicles, both Range Rover and Land Rover.
McGovern: What we are looking at is a whole proliferation of new Land Rover vehicles. I think we have got to build a Land Rover vehicle at an affordable, lower price, with the ability to walk it up to a higher price point. That's something we are studying at the moment, so the answer to that question is that it's possible, yes
McGovern: If you look at the LRX concept, which did inspire the Evoque, and compare it with the DC100 concept, it's a different tonality. It will have to be incredibly capable. Evoque is capable in different ways. The Evoque is a Range Rover, DC100 is a Land Rover. So in terms of design cues from the Evoque on the DC100, no, they are two different styles of vehicles. There will be tiny elements that will tie the vehicles together within the range