  2013 Land Rover Range Rover Evoque Coupé. Click image to enlarge |
Review and photos by Steven Bochenek
Evocative. Yes, that’s been said a billion times already. But looking at the Range Rover Evoque Coupé, well, it needed saying again. From angry CAP-TYPING gearhead trolls to the usually apathetic, everyone has an opinion. And that’s good.
On one extreme, there was my wife who misheard and asked if it was called an Ewok. Perhaps offensive to some, that’s actually a good place to start. The Evoque Coupé is unique, almost alien looking in its design and it’s charmingly huggable — just like those intergalactic teddy bears from The Return of the Jedi. Much of that has to do with the two doors where you’d expect four. More Ewokness: despite its cute looks the Evoque kicks ass so you’d better be careful around it.
Another, more informed, opinion came from published car fanatic Richard Pickering. He was intrigued how Land Rover corporate is dividing the brand space between its Range Rover and Land Rover lines. They’re taking very distinct routes. The Land Rover remains the country estate vehicle, while Range Rovers, most clearly the Evoque (Ewok) is designed for a playful catwalk in the city.
The outside design is impossible ignore. So illogically, we’ll begin inside. Here is a feast of luxury, some of it over the top, all of it top of the line.
The push-button start elevates Drive Select, supplanting a traditional shift knob.
‘Elevates’, you say? A Land Rover and Jaguar feature, this ‘advanced rotary gearshift’ is a puck-sized dial that emerges from a flat surface below the centre stack – where the shift knob would be.
It’s fun watching it surface. “There is no try. There is only do,” I would say, magically drawing the Drive Select dial up with my finest Jedi skills. You dial between Park, Reverse, Neutral, Drive and Sport modes. Then it disappears back into its swamp, er, I mean the console (let’s not get carried away, here) when you turn the car off.
    2013 Land Rover Range Rover Evoque Coupé. Click image to enlarge |
This tester was blessed with the $4,500 ‘Pure Plus Package’. Yes, that’s the name. It’s a particular peck of perfect provisions provided to stimulate the senses. That includes sumptuous grained leather seats that have three-bum programming memory. In this world of Leatherine® and Swayd™ it’s always a pleasure to sink into the real thing. There’s something about that noise leather makes – and of course the smell. Another noteworthy feature in the package is the panoramic sunroof. You can’t open it because, as the name suggests, it is pretty much your whole roof. However, it comes with a power blind that slides shut from back to front, evoking more Yoda imitations and demonstrations of The Force.
For $450 extra, you get satellite radio on the Meridian stereo. Despite the panoramic roof, this car has been soundproofed almost to the level of deep space. The noisiest of cityscapes won’t intrude upon your personal concert hall.
It was a brisk April week when I had this tester. Fortunately the ‘Climate Comfort Package’ comes standard with the Evoque. It includes heated front seats and, more important, heated steering wheel, one of those luxuries that instantly becomes necessity. ‘Climate Comfort’ fixes frosty fingers fast.
Now all your senses have been massaged. You’re ready to take it out on the road. Those blingy extras have been a treat for all who entered the Evoque but there are a few treats saved just for the driver.
Citified as the Range Rover Evoque is, it ain’t small, as you country folk would say. But more on that when we park it and discuss the outside.
Fortunately this trimline included reversing-camera technology. The large mirrors are also well positioned to inform you – good thing because the back windows aren’t much more than slits.
 2013 Land Rover Range Rover Evoque Coupé. Click image to enlarge |
Surprisingly it’s driven by a four-cylinder engine, albeit a 2.0L turbocharged one with thrusty outputs of 240 hp and 251 lb-ft of torque. It offers better fuel efficiency than other Land Rover products but you wouldn’t buy this to save on gas. It was expensive to fill. (The 19-inch Pirelli winter tires didn’t do the gas gauge any favours, but better safe than dead.)
You can dial the transmission into sport mode then shift gears with the paddles. It’s almost a tactile experience, like you’re gripping the road with your fingers. Be careful turning if you’re in drive… or if you think you’re tapping on the heated steering wheel button. You inadvertently may tap the paddle and suddenly you’re shifting manually without actually having selected the sport mode. Surprise! The high revs are barely audible but you can feel what’s happening if you don’t upshift.
The suspension is comfortable for city life but still tight enough to make the drive palpable. The steering is sharp and light.
This car is luxurious but there’s not much room in the back, which is difficult to access with its two doors. Its Ewok cuteness may bang up against real life if you ferry passengers around much. Indeed the space distribution throughout is, well, alien, but not necessarily in a bad way, just very different. Take the little storage hole beneath the centre stack; you can stick your hand through it, like a big donut. More uniqueness.
Normally I’m not crazy about crossovers in the city but the Evoque has some very car-like qualities that were evident in the drive. Corners were a fun exercise in inertia; the very muscles in your ribs stretch.
    2013 Land Rover Range Rover Evoque Coupé. Click image to enlarge |
Now let’s take a walkaround outside of the Evoque.
You know those pictures of people seemingly holding up the tower of Pisa? The Range Rover Evoque Coupé plays with reality and perspective similarly: it’s a trompe l’oeil. Like I done told ya’, it seems small but ain’t. Much of that has to do with the squat spread of territory for handling –and two doors.
So your very approach is deceptive. You expect it to be smaller. With careful attention to creating smallishness, it’s actually over two metres wide with the mirrors spread (aka when you’re driving) and 4,365 mm long. Considering the Mini Coupé at 3,729 mm and the Infiniti JX35 SUV 4,989 mm, we may have found a new definition for the word ‘crossover’.
Furthermore, with a small 11.3 m turning circle, the Evoque understands city driving. Escape routes are easier to invent in an agile machine.
However, unless you leave the city a lot, you may not need all it offers, most obviously the spread of terrain options you can choose for off-road driving. There are settings for desert sand, sloppy mud, slippery snow and more – most of which you don’t find in the city, at least outdoors.
   2013 Land Rover Range Rover Evoque Coupé. Click image to enlarge |
Somehow the Evoque appears low to the ground but again that’s a trompe l’eoil. At 1,605 mm, you’re almost riding high enough to be a soccer mom (the Volvo XC70 is one milimetre shorter and Infiniti JX35 is 1,742 mm), but more interesting, it wades into water up to half a meter high! During the week of the test, Huntsville, Ontario was submerged by more than twice that but the city hasn’t experienced such flooding in decades.
Then there’s the colour and psychology surrounding it. One of the chief thrills of writing about city rides is the names manufacturers give their creations. The colour of this tester is Orkney Grey. I’ve been to Orkney, a group of rocky islands awash in the North Sea a few blustery miles off Thurso, the northernmost edge of mainland Britain. Romantic as it sounds, ‘Orkney Grey’ is redundant.
I used to think it was an issue of having grown up in a house where we only had the 10-pack Crayola box, but it’s the marketing. In short, colour matters. Especially to women.
Really. Consider this: colour blindness affects just 0.4 percent of women but 7 percent of men, with nuanced degrees of it spreading much higher.1 So maybe that stereotype of women noticing a car by its colour has some basis in biology.
Now consider this: auto manufacturers understand your online behavior, Janey Consumer. Once you start playing with colour and wheels, you’re getting close to making a purchase. Interestingly, the colour selection on LandRover.com arrives very early in the user experience. (Next, the exterior details, then the wheels. The engine is the lowly 11th choice to learn about.)
Finally: women are the final arbiters of automobile purchases in the majority of homes.2 So suddenly the availability of that online colour tool takes on an even more nuanced edge. Pick your own moral:
a) These people are very smart, so you’d better be very careful
b) Once you get your eyes on something you love, you’re a goner
c) Somewhere in the middle.
What’s your opinion? Everyone has one when it comes to the Evoque.
Pricing: 2013 Land Rover Range Rover Evoque
Base price: $48,095
Options: Pure Plus Package – $4,500 (PURE Grained Leather, Fixed Panoramic Roof Power Blinds, Headlight Power Wash, Homelink, Fog Lights); Sirius Satellite radio – $450
Freight: $1,270
Price as tested: $54,315
Competitors:
Audi Allroad/Q5
BMW X1/X3
Mercedes-Benz GLK-Class
Mini Paceman
Crash Test Results:
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA)
Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS)
Footnotes:
