Two years ago, Jaguar Land Rover, which prefers to be called JLR, announced a reshuffling of its brands. With just two brands spelled out right there in the name, you would think very little shuffling was required. What JLR did, however, was split Land Rover’s vehicle lines into three distinct brands, creating the Range Rover brand, the Discovery brand, and the Defender brand, to go along with Jaguar. According to the automaker, JLR is now something like the parent company that operates these four separate brands. Don’t feel bad; we didn’t notice this news at the time either, and have still considered JLR to be made of Jaguar and Land Rover, and that’s it.
Finally ready to drive the point home, JLR has let a logo leak for its new Range Rover brand, which will be the first logo to appear on these SUVs in their 55-year history. Speaking to Autocar, JLR did confirm, however, that the spelled-out “Range Rover” script that has always appeared on the front and rear of each SUV will remain.
JLR Is Making RR A Thing
The new Range Rover logo reportedly appeared in a recent presentation to investors. Thankfully, a couple of images leaked, so we can see what we’re working with. The logo features two Rs in a simple sans-serif font that are placed vertically in diametric opposition to one another. If one were to squint, it would look like a vertical rectangle with two horizontal lines in the middle.
“The Range Rover Motif has been developed as a smaller symbol for where our familiar Range Rover device mark does not fit, such as on a label or as part of a repeating pattern, and within event spaces where an emblem is more appropriate.”
According to Autocar, the presentation described the reasoning why Range Rover needed a logo: “The Range Rover Motif has been developed as a smaller symbol for where our familiar Range Rover device mark does not fit, such as on a label or as part of a repeating pattern, and within event spaces where an emblem is more appropriate.” Think polo shirts, luggage, auto show stands, etc.
Range Rover is the second of JLR’s (now) four brands to be rebranded. You will likely never forget where you were when Jaguar launched its new branding alongside the unveiling of its Type 00 Concept. As for Defender and Discovery, we are still waiting to find out what their new identity will be.
TopSpeed’s Take
We could pull many case studies from the history of the automobile industry, in which car companies shot themselves in the foot thanks to a complicated and unnecessary rebranding. Jaguar’s recent public flogging for its weird, colorful relaunch is perhaps the best example one can find, and yet here we are with JLR continuing to reorganize and rebrand its vehicle lines. Shouldn’t it have learned?
To be fair, a simple logo for Range Rover shouldn’t create the blowback that Jaguar abandoning its decades of traditional sophistication did. It’s just a little logo that will probably appear on an SUV’s fender, and that’s it. That said, we must still ask and answer if it’s a good logo, and to our eyes, it could use work. The way the Rs are oriented makes it difficult to differentiate them or even recognize they’re Rs at all.
We feel for JLR. It probably spent thousands of dollars to develop this logo in a thoughtful way, while it could’ve just told an AI service, “Make me a Range Rover logo.” The results from either would likely be similar, because that’s the world we live in now.
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