But back in summer 1986, Charlie Hughes, the ex-Volkswagen marketing executive running Range Rover North America in Lanham, Md., was not thinking much about changing the nation’s automotive landscape. He had more immediate and worrisome concerns.
In a matter of months, he would be selling a 17-year-old vehicle that had undergone few upgrades since its European launch in March 1970. For example, the 1987 Range Rover was still powered by a hand-me-down General Motors engine that first saw duty in 1961, in a compact Buick sedan.
On top of that, the British-built Range Rovers came from a country with a reputation for producing poor-quality automobiles. And it was manufactured by a company that would have been roadkill if not for several oversized tranches of aid from the British government.
Hughes brushed off advice from consultant David Power, of J.D. Power and Associates. Price it above $25,000, Power warned Hughes, and the Range Rover will fail.
“I would be less than honest if I said I didn’t have some concerns,” Hughes, who led the company until 1999, told Automotive News.
“Some of those things did worry us,” he said. “But the vehicle was such a standalone icon, the more we exposed it in marketing clinics, the more confident we were. The shape was iconic. People either had to have one or they didn’t like it. And that’s what you want. There was no middle road.”
