Just as Land Rover is planning to introduce an even more luxurious Range Rover flagship, the Belgian coachbuilder and armorer Carat Duchatelet already has one waiting in the wings. The company famous for custom limousines based on Mercedes-Benz, Bentley and Rolls-Royce chassis is back in European ownership and has a few things in mind for the British SUV that will likely make those who've already put down a deposit on an S600 Maybach call their dealership.
Carat Duchatelet has turned Rangies into armored, spacious mobile offices in the past, and their plans for the latest iteration of the British tank are just as ambitious. The company now offers two versions of the Range Rover, already in Autobiography spec, each stretched at the B-pillar by 11.8 inches. But each version is stretched a little differently.
The first version features stretched rear doors and an expanded rear-passenger compartment trimmed with the company's palette of wood and leather elements, while a second version offers the same extra legroom and even more adventurously re-engineered reverse-opening rear doors.
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...
The
interior is designed to offer more room to rear seat passengers, though
the company offers plenty of customization options to turn the cabin
into a mobile office.
The ultimate aim of the stretched Rangie is to offer greater-than-first-class seating accommodations for the rear-seat passengers, who we picture being in the oil or gas business. Or both.
Carat is staying mum on the pricing for either version of the stretched Range, but given the fact that options are, in effect, limited only by the customer's wallet and imagination, there is no such thing as a base price for one of these. Also keep in mind that this is merely the thin-skinned version; an armored variant is expected to be offered down the road, though Land Rover now offers a factory-armored Range Rover Sentinel, as well.
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The coachbuilder also offers a version with stretched conventional rear doors that maintain the lines of the original.
Carat Duchatelet's version won't dampen Land Rover's appetite for rolling out an even more luxurious version of its own, likely to be priced north of $200,000, but it'll give the coachbuilder the opportunity to dream up something for the factory version once it hits the streets.