Land Rover To Unveil New Concept At Detroit 2004

For immediate release

LAND ROVER TO UNVEIL NEW CONCEPT VEHICLE AT DETROIT AUTO SHOW

Gaydon, Warwickshire, 4 December 2003 – Land Rover announces today that a new concept vehicle will be unveiled at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit on 5 January 2004.

Named the Range Stormer, this high-performance 4x4 makes its world debut at Detroit, and follows the reveal of a design rendering at the Frankfurt Motor Show in September this year.

Commenting on the new concept, Land Rover's managing director Matthew Taylor, said: "Range Stormer is a modern, striking, high-technology vehicle. It is very much conceived to be an on-road, high performance machine, as well as class-leading off-road like all Land Rovers. Breadth of ability is one of its many strengths."

Land Rover design director, Geoff Upex added: "It is possible to apply Land Rover design language to a vehicle of totally different proportions and still make it very obviously a Land Rover. This is what we've done here, and the result is a Land Rover like nothing that has been seen before."

Further information and photography will be available from 2 January 2004.

Has anyone seen the Calloway (Callaway maybe?) Freelander? It's awesome! Bright blue...illegally tinted windows...right hand drive (always a plus *wink*)...just an awesome vehicle. ...and this is from someone who absolutely hates the Freelanders.

At the Chicago Auto Show I got to see the Range Stormer...and it rocked! :) Here's a pic I took while I was there...

http://kindtimes.com/content/places/IL/Chicago/events/2004AutoShow/images/images/AutoShow168.jpg

I have more pics of it here...
http://www.kindtimes.com/content/places/IL/Chicago/events/2004AutoShow/

OK, help me out here...Are we all looking at the stormer and the LR3 and seeing a future of off road events and dented fenders? Ummm...no. If you surf around these threads, you'll probably learn I just bought a Disco II and I'm happy with it, knowing these new LR3's are coming.

Anyway back to this picture of the Stormer...

As much as I think it makes a cool concept car, like anything else I've seen, I'm a little sad to see this sort of thing with an LR badge on it. I'm no marketing guru, so for all I know the off roader market has dried up and the luxury high riders is where the money's at. (How do ya like that there grammer?!!?) A few years back Jeep unveiled some crazy little concept that looked like a wrangler in the front and some dune buggy, open cockpit beach cruiser everywhere else. It wasn't the best looking design, I think, but at least it stayed in tune with the heritage of the company. I mean, I think it was even sittin on a pile of rocks or something. Remember the days of auto shows sporting discoveries up on vertival mounting racks and towering over piles of fake boulders. I want to see how this stormer is going to look in such a setting. I mean after all, this is supposed to be the next "most travelled vehicle" right?

Adios,
Dave