What exactly is ‘new’ about the new Range Rover Evoque?
Visually? Optional all-LED headlights, and a snazzy new LED running light shape, copied by fresh LED tail lights.
There are bigger( fake) air intakes, and a skipload of new wheels and paint choices. Which brings the total to 14 colours, and 16 alloy options. If you see an Evoque identically specced to your own, you’re officially Doing It Wrong.
Has Land Rover junked the awful touchscreen inside?
Sort of. It’s getting better, and various wallet-raiding option packages will improve the infotainment system further, but the Evoque doesn’t benefit from the full ‘InControl Pro’ system in, say, the Jag XE. Or the Landie Disco Sport, for that matter.
It’s a proper downer, because although the Evoque’s touchscreen no longer has loading times so tardy you’d think it was painting a watercolour map every time you opened the sat-nav, there’s no denying it looks rather old hat against the best of BMW and Merc. The grainy displays seem incongruously shoved into the MY2016 Evoque’s dashboard. This is supposed to be a Range Rover, dahlings.
Land Rover has indeed binned the cheapo old instrument dials for cleaner ones that don’t look like they came as a free gift in a box of cereal, and had a rummage around the Range Rover parts bin for plusher-feeling materials elsewhere.
You can have cooled massage seats, ambient lighting to shame a nightclub, and the full brigade of lane-departure and frontal collision warning beepers. So, drive like a wally and the Evoque will sound like an electro-rave too.
So it looks and feels a bit posher. That it?
Fortunately not. Having spent the thick end of £800m setting up a shiny new engines factory in Wolverhampton, it’d have been remiss of Land Rover not to equip its miniature cash-cow with one of its much-vaunted new ‘Ingenium’ engines.
It’s not a simple swap-job from a Jaguar XE either. In order to fit into the Evoque’s transverse-only engine bay, and meet Land Rover’s requirements for 50cm wading depth and proper approach and departure angles, 20 per cent of the engine’s parts are bespoke to the Evoque. That’s a hell of a lot of effort for one car model.