FAMILY CAR REVIEW: 2018 RANGE ROVER VELAR

Storage in the Velar is relatively good. There are three cup holders in the front central console, a square one that is the only space big enough for a large refillable water bottle in the whole car, and two round ones with air-filled cushions in the sides of them to help grip your drink vessel. These feel a little over inflated and make it difficult to remove disposable coffee cups without spilling them. The round holders will hold a 600ml bottle, or a disposable or re-usable coffee cup.

The central console storage box lid is a double armrest on which each side adjusts and extends independently so that either front passenger can have it to their liking. Inside, the storage box is fully lined to stop things rattling around, and there are two USB points, an HDMI, a SIM card and a 12V socket too. The glove box is a good size and fully lined too, so I could fit my wallet in there with an iPad.

There is no glasses case in the ceiling of the Velar, which I find disappointing, especially in a car with such interior luxury. Instead, underneath the central console touch screen is a large shelf that I found the best place for my phone and glasses.

The door bins in the front of the Velar are big enough to hold a few 600ml bottles, or your wallet and a 600ml or baby’s bottle but it is not tall enough for a large refillable water bottle. The door bins are lined on one side which helps with preventing things from rattling.

There are good sized wells for handles in all the doors which is a great BabyDrive feature as I find them useful for putting the little things out my daughter's hands in while I’m putting her in and out of the car, or the car keys!

In the back there are two cup holders in a fold down armrest in the central seat back, but they are the same as the front ones; just a little too cushioned!

The door bins in the rear are the same as the front ones, so they will only fit 600ml or baby bottles, and they are not tall enough for large refillable water bottles. They are also lined on one side, which helps with preventing things from rattling.

The boot space and its functionality are really important. I like to have a big boot space and little side wells or areas I can divide things into. So something I don’t want to move around while I’m driving such as Tulsi’s lunch bag or her wet swimming gear can be sectioned off in a little well where it’s not going to spill or get squashed by the rest of the things in the boot.

Hooks for securing shopping bags to are also favourites of mine, I like being able to secure the bag containing more fragile things like eggs so they don’t move around on the journey.

I measure the boot space in freezer shopping bags, prams and dogs. Not because I think all there is to a mum’s life is food shopping, prams and dogs. (Although it can feel like it sometimes!!) But because these are visually mesurable items we can all associate with. For me, the car company boot measurement of litres is not an amount I can easily visualise and 400L in one car may differ in usability to that in another due to the configuration or shape of the space.

The boot of the Velar the floor is nicely carpeted and flat so you can definitely do a very luxurious emergency nappy change! You won’t even have to bend down to do it… there are two buttons on the left side of the boot you can press to raise and lower the back of the car!! AMAZING!!! This makes loading and unloading the boot really kind on you back and makes nappy changes nicer too!

There are two hooks on either side of the boot for securing bags to and four anchor points in the boot floor for a cargo net.

The retractable cargo blind has a switch on one side that you pull back to remove the bar and it is small and light enough it will fit easily in the boot with whatever you are carrying.

Storage space was very generous in the boot. When the boot is empty I could fit 14 shopping bags in there.

With the Mountain Buggy Duet twin stroller, I could fit six shopping bags in around it. The stroller would fit lengthways as well as widthways in the boot.

The Mountain Buggy Urban Jungle pram fitted in the boot lengthways and widthways. With it lengthways I could fit seven shopping bags in around it.

With the Mountain Buggy Nano lying flat in the boot, I could fit 10 shopping bags in around it. The Nano would not stand up in the boot; it was just too tall to fit underneath the retractable blind.

The parking sensors in the Velar are very sensitive and they are very noisy too!!

I found I couldn’t see where the warnings were coming from, or related to, as they seemed to be set off all over the place by things a fair distance from the car and because there are three screens you’re not sure which one to look at!

Becoming a parent I soon realised there are some noises and sounds I feel are unnecessary and I could happily live without if it meant my baby stayed asleep!!

That often the distraction of my screaming, distressed baby is more dangerous when driving than not having a lane departure warning for example.

If it is the lane departure warning beeping that creates distress with my baby then which is safest?

It’s where I think we need to be able to strike a balance and choose when we can mute the warnings or swap them to a vibration in the steering wheel or flashing light perhaps?

A lot of these noises come with the increase in technology and especially linked to safety features and alerts. For me these all have their place.

Another thing I have realised is I spend my time in a lot more places where small children roam, parks, beaches, play gyms, swimming lessons, daycare centre etc. I have become more aware that when I’m reversing or manouvering in the car parks I have to tripple check for small children running around behind me or being in my blind spot when reversing. For this I LOVE reversing cameras, I just don’t like their beeping sounds!!

I have become so much more aware of safety and potential accidents or hazards since having a child and so I love the peace of mind that I get from the cameras and sensors combined with my own vision from windows and mirrors as I don’t trust cameras alone.

The sensors could not be muted; only the volume turned down slightly, by pressing the volume button on the touch screen, the beeping definitely disturbed my sleeping daughter.

So did the indicators! The Velar has the loudest, most baby waking indicators I have ever heard!! The tic-toc was so loud and disturbing that for the first time in a long time I had to keep driving straight over every junction and roundabout to avoid using the indicators when I was driving my daughter to sleep!!

The vibration for the lane departure warning in the Velar is so strong the whole car seems to shake. The vibration is unfortunately enough to wake sleeping rear passengers as well front ones! A warning flashes up in your head up display as well in case you missed the shaking!!

The Velar does not have Apple CarPlay or Android Auto, which is disappointing in a car of this price.

There are three screens in the Velar. Four if you include your head up display, so there is quite a lot of technology to navigate! Once you have worked out which screen does what I found it was actually quite simple to use.

I plugged my phone in with nursery rhymes playing and they didn’t play straight away. I had to go into the source page and select my phone, it wasn’t too complicated but a step more than I’d have liked!

The windows in the Velar are a little noisy to open and close but nothing compared to the doors!! It’s not the opening and closing of them that will wake your sleeping child but the chiming sound when you open them! Even when you have come to a complete stop they do it! It is so unnecessary!

You can lock and unlock the doors and windows from the driver’s door control panel.

The Velar does have auto engine cut out which you can turn off, in the car settings screen, on the lower touch screen. It is not too bad when it does turn off at lights, as I found this didn’t disturb my sleeping daughter when it turned back on again and the car lumbered to a start. I found if you turn it off, it is not remembered for the next journey, meaning you need to press it for each journey you make.

Road and engine noise in the Velar were both okay. The engine does seem to have a delay or lag when you first try to take off from standing and there is a bit of revving noise that comes with that but apart from that, it is pretty quiet.

A surprising feature I did discover when reviewing the Velar is the car warns you when the battery is running low and will alert you to start the engine and recharge the battery.

There is a chiming alarm when a seat belt is removed and the digital display also alerts you to it. The digital display also gives you a visual of which seats are occupied and seatbelts fastened when you start the engine and you ‘OK' it with the controls on the left of the steering wheel. Another car I drove recently had this same ‘OK' system but it seemed to have it for anything and everything and it drove me mad. Thankfully in the Velar it doesn’t have it for as many things.

The Velar is a very comfortable five-seater; there are ISOFix points in the two outer rear seats within plastic guides that make them easy to connect to.

The three top tether anchor points are on the backs of all three rear seat backs. Surprisingly, I found I could fit three child seats across the back really easily. A Mountain Buggy Protect infant capsule and Britax Graphene (rear facing) child seat in the outer two and a Britax Maxi Guard Pro booster seat (forward facing) in the centre.

The rear seats have a lot of shaping in the bases and backs so I really wasn’t expecting three child seats to fit but they all fitted and in the actual allotted space so the shaping wasn’t a problem. I could use the ISOFix for both outer seats, rather than having to move the child seats outward and use the seatbelts as is the case in most cars.

Installing the child seats was easy, apart from the boot being so long in the Velar that I actually really struggled to reach to attach the top tethers.

Due to the angle of the back seats, I found I needed a towel or wedge underneath rear-facing capsules to level them out, but you would need to check your own child seat.

Posting bub into their child seats from inside and outside the car was fine; the door openings are plenty big enough and there is plenty of room inside in the back too.

Australia being a country of weather extremes- blazing sun and torrential rain, mean you may find it easier to put Bub into their seat from inside the car sometimes. If it’s hot you can get the air-con going, cool the car down and not stand out in the sun while you fasten them in or shelter from the rain and not get soaked yourself whilst you’re doing it. So it is important to test whether Bub can be easily installed from either direction!

With a single child seat installed in the back, there would be plenty of room for feeding bub, and with two child seats installed there would be room in a side seat but it would be cramped.

When two rear facing child seats are installed in the outer seats of the Velar using the ISOFix, I could sit between them and it was reasonably comfortable. That said, there is a hump in the floor of the footwell, the seat back is firm because of the armrest and my sides touched the child seats. When the front seat base and backrest are in their furthest forward positions I could squeeze through the rear door into the middle seat without removing a child seat (I am 162cm). It was a bit of a tight fit and I wouldn’t want to travel for too many long journeys like that.

The seats in the Velar I tested were a mixture of navy blue and light cream leather; they are beautifully upholstered with great attention to detail, contrast stitching and Union Jack flag pattern in the perforations!

It is all very opulent. But to keep it clean with small hands and feet is a nightmare!! Seat protectors are a must under child seats as the cream leather and perforations in the main seat backs and bases are asking for splatters and spills that would be very difficult to clean off.

Thankfully the backs of the front seats are the navy blue leather so little feet are not kicking against light cream leather at least!! My daughter did get her feet up onto the back of the headrest though which is light cream so not that practical!

The front seats in the Range Rover Velar we tested were ridiculously comfortable! You can alter them in every way imaginable using the electric switches on the side of each one. You can even alter the length of the seat base, which is a fantastic feature especially as my husband is 20cm taller than me and we often find seat bases are either too long or too short for us so this is a fantastic way of pleasing us both!

Both front seats are also heated and cooled and you can choose your individual temperatures on the seating page of the lower touch screen. On the same page are also the individual controls for the front seats massaging function!! This is also amazing and you can choose the type of massage and its intensity in this screen too, it is all very lovely!!! It makes sitting in the school pick-up traffic completely bearable!!

There is also an electric control to move the headrest up and down and the sides of it fold in and out like the ones on an aeroplane, but I still couldn’t wear a ponytail, even with these super fancy headrests, as they stick too far forward for a ponytail to be worn comfortably!

I had spent hours styling my hair this morning to get it just right too… said no new mum ever!!!

The second-row seats do not slide or adjust for legroom but they do recline using electric controls at the sides. And the headrests in the back do allow passengers to wear a ponytail!

The steering wheel is fully adjustable with an electronic control on the side of it that you use to glide the steering wheel into your preferred position.

The controls for the cruise control are very simple to use and are positioned on the right-hand side of the steering wheel. Surprisingly the cruise control in the Velar is not very accurate! How can a car of this price and standard have bad cruise control?! Surely if you are going to pay over $140,000 for a car you would demand that the cruise control works?

The car completely runs away with itself at 60km/h on a slightly undulating road. I test all cars on the same roads and have driven cars a third of the price that have better cruise control!

There are four air vents across the front dashboard, two in the centre and one at either end. The controls for air-con are in the lower touch media screen in the central console. They are very simple to use but they just take a bit of getting used to because they are very different and integrated into the touchscreen.

There are two dials on the touch screen that change function depending on what screen is selected. I found it actually really simple once I got used to it.

In the rear, there are two vents in the back of the central console storage box and there are controls positioned with the rear vents too. They are reachable by the driver so you can adjust them whilst travelling along, which I often find myself doing with my daughter in the back.

The windows in the Velar are darkened but they don’t seem to stop much sunlight coming in, so it is quite a bright car inside, especially with the light cream leather for light to reflect off too. The model we drove had a very large sunroof with nothing but a thin cream-coloured mesh shade over it so it let all the sun, heat and light come pounding in all day long. This is really not a good feature in the Australian summer with little passengers on board!! I have driven the Jaguar F-Pace recently, which had the same sunroof with a black mesh cover and black interior, and the car seemed to hold a lot more of the heat, which I think was because it was darker than the interior of the Velar.

There are no blinds built into the rear doors of the Velar, which is a surprise. I would want that little luxury in this car too!

I found the visibility out of the back of the Velar was not fantastic; it seems the hips of the Velar stick out further than the main body so I am never too sure where the car ends when trying to see out at my modest 162cm height.

The side mirrors are also very small, which is not very helpful for a car of this size. This, and it being hard to judge the edges of the Velar made manoeuvring in car parks, school pick-ups etc a nightmare because I couldn’t be 100% sure the road was clear behind me.

One thing I have noticed since being a mum is I hate it when I reach a destination or get home from being out and Tulsi has either done really well in the car or she is screaming her head off and I have done really well to keep it together for the entire journey (usually the latter!!) and it takes 10 minutes to park the car! It can be really stressful. Usually I dread when we get big cars or utes as they take longer in our tight apartment block carpark, the Velar was really easy and enjoyable to drive but not to park!

Visibility for rear passengers is good out of the front of the car, for rear-facing passengers the windows are not very deep and like the smaller Range Rover Evoque they slope up slightly so that rear-facing passengers don’t have much of a view out. Forward-facing rear passengers, they have a great view out of the front but not out of the side windows.

There are lit vanity mirrors in the visors for both front passengers but the visors are not extendable.

The interior lights in the front are touch sensitive. In the back, they are situated above the rear doors and they can be set to come on automatically when you open them but you can't reach from the front to turn them on/off while driving. However, I could press the central light in the front to turn the rear ones off too, which was a great feature.

I often will reach back to turn on the interior light if I am driving at night time, I find my little girl gets less distressed traveling at night that way. It helps if I can reach the interior light from the drivers seat so I can turn it on and off whilst driving. I often find my daughter will need it on as we start our journey in the dark but once she falls asleep I can turn it off. It is also useful when there are lights situated above the doors where the handles are usually positioned. These are good for when putting baby into their child seats when visibility is poor, so you do not have to reach across them to a light situated in the ceiling centrally.

I have found the Velar a little temperamental to drive; there is a lag when you first set off and a drag when you are initially accelerating. Which is frustrating and unexpected in a car like this. Other than that it is a really enjoyable car to drive, you have so many gadgets and luxuries inside it, and it is a pleasant ride for the front passengers.

For the rear passengers, I think the ride is actually a bit jostling. I don’t know if this is because the leather seats are quite firm, preventing the child seat really bedding down into the seat base and instead sits on top a little and can then roll about a bit.

The visibility when parking the Velar is limited because of the small side mirrors and not being able to see where the extremities of the rear of the car are. The reversing camera is fantastic in this instance; it has a large, very clear and good quality image. The parking sensors I have found are a distraction from the camera view; there is a button on the screen that looks like it would turn the sound off but they cannot be muted, and when you press it the volume is quietened but not muted.

There are handles above both back doors that are well positioned to hold a baby’s toy.

There is a 12V socket in the boot, one in the central console storage box and one in the back of the Velar.

The doors of the Velar have the light cream leather with a light wooden panel in them. The cream leather is difficult to keep clean, especially around the handle area where hands grab it to open and close the doors.

Nice carpet floor mats are in both the front and back foot wells, held in place with little plastic hooks.

The Velar does have keyless entry; the exterior door handles actually retract into the doors and appear flush with the door panels. When you unlock the car with the key fob or when you just press the button on the door, the handles slowly pop out.

The tailgate of the Velar opens electronically and more importantly silently! There is no peace shattering beeping sound as it opens and closes which is a great BabyDrive feature as it won’t wake a bub if you get something out of your boot while they’re sleeping!!

The Velar is aesthetically absolutely beautiful inside and out! The styling, design and attention to detail are wonderful, down to the interior mood lighting and projected logos on the exterior in the dark.

The controls, screens and buttons all feel nice to touch and use and the trims and surfaces seem good quality. The Union Jacks in the cream leather seat perforations are carried across in the speakers in the doors as well.

I have to say I did find it rather intimidating at first as a BabyDrive, especially with the light cream leather, to keep them clean and spill and scuff free over the week, but that’s what seat protectors are made for!!!

The Range Rover Velar scored a five-star ANCAP safety rating, with an adult occupancy protection score of 93%, and rating of 35.5 out of 38 points.

It scored 7.4 out of 8 for the frontal offset test, and 8/8 for both the side impact test and the pole test.

For child occupancy protection the Velar scored 85% (41.9 out of 49.)

The crash test performance for a six year old scored 11.89 and the crash test performance for a 10 year old scored 10.96.

In the testing they found in the frontal offset test, protection of the six year old and 10 year old dummies was good or adequate, except for the neck of the 10 year old dummy, protection of which was rated as marginal. In the side impact test, protection was good for all critical body areas of both dummies.

For child safety features and child seat installation the Velar scored 7 points for safety features and 12 points for installation check.

For pedestrian protection, the Velar was scored 74% (31.3 out of 42) and for safety assist it was scored 72% (8.8 out of 12).

The Range Rover Velar doesn't come with much safety equipment as standard, all models come with AEB, lane departure warning, a reversing camera, trailer stability assist, hill-start assist, hill descent control and tyre pressure monitoring.

Some of these safety features are also features that drive me crazy as a mum! Like the lane departure and the parking sensor beeping sound.

I want all the safety technology AND to be able to mute the sound when Tulsi’s asleep!

The Velar has six airbags as standard; dual frontal and side airbags in the front, and curtain airbags for the second-row passengers.