Land Rover Is Showing Fewer Concepts Because Of Chinese Copycats

If you’ve recently wondered why we haven’t seen any dynamic, daring concepts from Land Rover recently, it’s all down to Chinese copycats.

Autocar has quoted the company’s design chief as saying that their experience with the Land Rover LRX concept, which famously wowed the automotive world at around Christmas 2007 and eventually appeared as the Range Rover Evoque, barely altered from the concept, has taught them to be more careful.

Chinese rip-off merchants Landwind brought out the X7 copycat soon after the Evoque was launched, solely because the firm was able to get its tape measures out on the LRX when it made its motor show debut, in turn giving it the time to start building one of its own.
The British magazine quotes Land Rover’s Gerry McGovern as saying:

“We’re nervous about showing show cars a couple of years out as you can be copied just like that.”

There was no concept of the Velar and there have been no new Defender concepts after the unfortunately rubbish DC100 was given a media kicking. The reduction in concepts to pore over is a sad result, though, so we hope the Chinese legal system does the honourable thing and puts a stop to it, despite winning the lottery and being struck by lightning on the same day seeming likelier.