China Auto Show: the Posh Range Rover Evoque

GENIUS is an overused word. But every few hundred years, human civilisation produces a person of such raw talent, such vision, such genius, that all the rest of the world can do is stand back and gasp in awe. Aristotle, Leonardo da Vinci, Isaac Newton, Thomas Edison – they all blazed a dazzling trail across art, design and science. But today we can add a new name to the pantheon of polymaths.

Victoria Beckham. Singer. Dancer. Movie star. Fashion designer. Perfumier. And now, car designer.

Or, to be precise, “creative design executive” for Land Rover.

On show in Beijing this week was the new hand-finished Range Rover Evoque Special Edition, the result of an 18-month collaboration between Land Rover and the multi-faceted Mrs Beckham.

The car is hand-finished in matt grey paint, unique 20-inch gloss black forged alloy wheels and luxurious rose-gold details, limited to this Special Edition. Inside, the sport design four-seats are finished with a bold “baseball” stitch detail chosen by Victoria as a “tongue-in-cheek reference to her sporting husband David,” it says on this press release.

There are also “ultra-luxurious” floor mats. Alluding to her humble beginnings, Mrs Beckham tells a tale of simpler times, before her rags-to-riches story flew towards the heavens: when she was a young girl, her father owned a Rolls-Royce and she would enjoy taking her shoes off to sink her bare feet into the thick carpeting. Land Rover’s designers replicated this for her by using mohair to make the mats. Can you honestly say you would have thought of doing that?

Land Rover design director, Gerry McGovern, spoke at the launch of how just being in the same room as Mrs Beckham was inspirational. “At [our] first meeting, Victoria herself inspired the use of rose gold. She was wearing dark clothes and a rose gold, man’s watch. I was struck by the juxtaposition of the masculine watch on a very elegant, feminine wrist. We both agreed it was the ideal way to introduce a softer touch to the bold, assertive exterior colour scheme.”

Not just a creative visionary and cultural touchstone, then, but a woman of remarkable diplomacy, empathy and grace. Just by choosing to wear that specific watch for the meeting, she generously let him think he’d had some sort of creative input into her grand vision for the Evoque, sparing him those inevitable feelings of inadequacy and hopelessness as her God-like creativity eclipsed all around her.

“I did a lot of research, and created mood boards to show the team my love of timeless and classic design,” she said at this week’s launch. “I looked at yachts, luxury jets and classic cars.” Incredible.

While it’s uncertain what some other, lesser, celebrities would be up to if they weren’t famous, it’s clear from all this that the formidably talented Mrs Beckham would easily have found her niche in luxury car design.

The Range Rover Evoque Special Edition with Victoria Beckham goes on sale first in China, with deliveries due from October 2012. Indicative pricing is £79,995.