Origins under BMW (project "L30")

Last updated: 18 June 2012

The L322 began life as project "L30" under BMW ownership. When BMW bought the Rover Group in 1994, its management quickly judged the just-launched P38A too dated to last, cancelled its planned 1999 updates, and prioritised an all-new Range Rover. The result was one of the most expensively developed vehicles of its time.

A 2003 Range Rover L322 Vogue — the BMW era · Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA

The clean-sheet brief

BMW R&D chief Wolfgang Reitzle drove the project. The story goes that he sat blindfolded in a P38A and performed a "touch test" of the interior materials, identifying around 70 areas for improvement. The design team was told to start from a clean sheet rather than base the car on the P38A's dated underpinnings — while still making it instantly recognisable as a Range Rover.

Design & designers

Design was led by Rover Group design director Geoff Upex with lead designer Don Wyatt. Proposals were invited from the Land Rover styling department, from BMW (under Chris Bangle), and from outside firm DRA (Design Research Associates): a deliberately competitive process. The winning exterior grew from a sketch by Land Rover designer Phil Simmons that drew on both the original Range Rover and the lines of a Riva speedboat. The Munich studio was headed by Ian Cameron; the acclaimed cabin was the work of Alan Sheppard.

The team kept the classic Range Rover cues:

• The simple, linear side elevation
• The "floating" roof and upright glasshouse
• The castellated?Castellated means stepped like castle battlements — the raised ridges along the leading edge of the clamshell bonnet are a signature Range Rover cue. clamshell bonnet
• Linear front and rear fascias; the wing vents even echo the original's door handles

Developed in Munich

The L30 was a joint Rover-BMW project, based largely at BMW's FIZ Engineering Centre in Munich until the final pre-production stage, when work returned to Solihull. Munich was used because Rover's Gaydon facility was already full with the new Mini (R50) and other projects. With a development budget far beyond anything Land Rover's previous owners could have managed, the engineers gave the car a state-of-the-art monocoque?monocoque. A unibody structure where the body shell itself carries the loads, instead of bolting a body onto a separate ladder chassis. Stiffer, quieter, lighter. body and all-round height-adjustable air suspension. Only about 10 prototypes were built before the first production car.

BMW under the skin

BMW influence ran deep. The car was designed to take BMW's M62 V8, and many parts were BMW items adapted for Land Rover:

• Engines: BMW 4.4 V8 (M62) petrol and 3.0 Td6 (M57) diesel. Supplied to a unique Land Rover spec (lubrication able to cope with 45° inclines, off-road throttle mode).
• Electronics and infotainment essentially shared with the BMW E39 5 Series.
• Instrument cluster derived from the E38 7 Series (in Land Rover green), plus BMW steering column, stalks, key fob and switches.

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