OBJECT 08: CAMOUFLAGE
OBJECT 08: CAMOUFLAGE There is a period in the development of a new car when its designers do their utmost to distract us from the features they’re most proud of. That particular period starts some way in to the car’s development when prototypes with something close to the final bodywork start testing on public roads, and lasts until the finished car has had the silk sheets pulled from it at a motor show. Before that, very early prototypes might wear the clothes of an existing model, subtly tailored to fit the dimensions of the new car beneath, and are hard to spot. But no Land Rover would ever be signed off without exhaustive testing in its final, finished form too. That means an uncomfortable few months for the designers, who want to maximize the impact of that unveil moment and show us their work in the best possible light. The interest in the All-New Discovery’s exterior design was particularly intense. Over more than a quarter of a century its distinctive design language – the clamshell bonnet, the stepped ‘Alpine’ roof and the asymmetric tailgate, among other features – has become as iconic and recognizable as the old Defender’s boxier forms. Press and customers alike were desperate to know how it would evolve. And it has evolved: more dynamic, and more aerodynamic too, its exterior form reflecting its clever, lightweight aluminum structure. “We’ve made designing the camouflage a hobby,” says Andy Wheel. “For the latest Range Rover we were inspired by the ‘dazzle graphics’ on early battleships, and for the Range Rover Evoque Convertible we used cartoon human figures. For the new Discovery we took a barcode and distorted it wildly.” “There’s a point in the testing process,” adds Alex Heslop, the Chief Engineer, “where we have to run the cars on the public road without conventional camouflage covering whole sections of the car.” As already mentioned, early prototypes wear the old model shape as camouflage. Next comes the heavy camouflage over the new shape, but this “can have the unwanted effect of masking things like wind noise in high-speed testing”. So finally light camouflage is applied over the new shape. “The barcode disguise is just a film applied to the real panels. The shape of the car is unaffected. You’re looking at the finished car, but the camouflage is brilliant at stopping you seeing it.” But as we now know, Gerry McGovern and his team kept the final car very close to that original Discovery Vision Concept. “If you really wanted to know what was under the camo you could just have looked at that,” says Andy Wheel. “The new Discovery was hiding in plain sight all along.” FIND OUT MORE about the All-New Discovery at landrover.com 52
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