Aha, the Range Rover Evoque Convertible, just in
time for…autumn.
Perfect timing, don’t you think? I mean, if you wanted a
£50,000 open-top four-seater and sunning yourself and three passengers was
priority, well you wouldn’t be in Britain for a kick-off. More to the point, a
high-spec BMW 4 Series, Mercedes C-Class cabrio or mildly used Maserati
GranCabrio will be just the job for sunny climes.
The Evoque Convertible, with its full-time four-wheel drive,
Terrain Response off-road tech and here tested with a sensible 2.0-litre
Ingenium turbo diesel engine good for 177bhp, 317lb ft and 49.6mpg, is perhaps
the perfect soft-top for the other 360 days of British life, when the weather’s
refusing to get its shades on.
Oh come on. It’s hardly been properly engineered, right?
Tell you what, the Evoque makes for a surprisingly good
soft-top on first impression. I remember doing a ‘tech day’ on this car a while
ago, when the engineers talked me around the (considerable) obstacles they’d
headbutted to cleave the Evoque in twain. One of the bits they were really
proud of was the roof – not just how resistant it is to rain and dirt – but the
quietness of its mechanism.
Whirring and clanking would be totally out of place at this
price, and the roof’s operation is impressively silent. And swift, taking 18
seconds to fold away, at up to 30mph. For this ability, and the joys of
top-spec, bodykitted HSE Dynamic trim, you pay £47,500.
So, with your Teflon coat on, what’s it like with the
roof down?
Roof stowed (with no consequence to the 251 litre boot,
aside from the letter box you have to post luggage through to access it), the
Evoque proves to be a decent drop-top, so far as buffeting goes. The windows
stand tall above the beltline, so with the glass raised the cabin remains cocooned
from all but the merest breeze.
Drop the windows and sure, it’s draughtier, but even up to
60mph we’re talking a pleasant wind in the hair ruffle rather than a category
five scalping. The hair boutiques of Soho will be devastated.
You’ll stay warm too. No heated steering wheel is a major
faux pax, but the heater is, as usual for a Land Rover, so effective it’s a
wonder the plastic vanes in the vents don’t melt. And the heated seats seem
potent enough to liquefy your insides. Maybe don’t have a strong curry before a
winter evening’s al fresco motoring.
Erm, thanks. Roof back up, thanks. Any good?
However, the rear seats are of a usable shape and size –
although that’s slightly skewed by the fact a hard-top three-door Evoque is
hardly commodious. Still, the seats aren’t token tribute acts – you could
reasonably put adults back there – just as comfortably as in the conventional
German cabrios.
And what about the same old rubbish touchscreen that
controls all the infotainment functions?
Gone. Hoo-flipping-ray. Convertibles use the InControl Touch
Pro system that’s finally making inroads into the Jaguar Land Rover range. It
is a superb touchscreen – fast, responsive, intuitive and beautifully rendered.
Ironically, this is the most modern an Evoque interior’s ever felt, despite
being five years old, and that’s entirely down to the rebooted media centre.
At last.
So assuming you have the necessary nerve to drive around in
a convertible miniature Range Rover, you’re actually getting quite a good piece
of kit?
Not so fast. No, seriously. The Ingenium diesel engine is
not the most thrusting of turbodiesel powerplants, even for a 2.0-litre, and
when laden with some 280kg of pillar, sill and bulkhead stiffening, not to
mention the roof’s hushed mechanism, it’s swamped. Claims of 0-62mph in 9.7sec
and 121mph for this lump feel generous.
The Evoque – any Evoque – clearly isn’t a car you brake late
and turn hard in, so effects of the weight gain aren’t too, um, heavily felt
there, though the brake pedal is admittedly very squidgy – a tactic to disguise
the car’s mass, for sure. But so far as accelerating goes, this feels like an
underpowered machine, and the indecisive nine-speed gearbox isn’t a helpful
ally. I drove a six-speed automatic Kia Sportage last week that offered
smoother step-off, kickdown and more sensible gear selection than than this
Range Rover.
Does it flop about on your cruddy British roads?
The good news is there’s no perceptible wobbling of the
rear-view mirror or windscreen pillars, and the steering column stays where it
was fixed in the factory. The bad news is that there’s a resonance, a general
crashiness, about the stiffened chassis that doesn’t take kindly to uneven
roads. I’m not saying it’d be better with flex, but the rumbly ride is a
telltale clue the Evoque wasn’t conceived with a convertible model
in mind.
But come on, you just wouldn’t would you?
I wouldn’t. I left my house at six in the morning under
cover of darkness to test the roof-down behaviour. In late October. Thank
goodness for that nuclear heater. But purely objectively, this car isn’t the
dog’s dinner you might have expected. Or even secretly hoped it would be.
Regardless, enough people ‘would’ to make this thing viable. Land Rover isn’t
in the habit of making unpopular products lately.
On the other hand, it is the slowest and less composed
cabrio you can buy for this kind of money. And £47k is a lot of money. Which
brings it back full circle – the Evoque Convertible is a car solely for the
relative handful of people who really, really like the idea of driving around
in an Evoque Convertible.
Photography: Ollie Tenant
source: http://www.topgear.com/car-reviews/land-rover/20-si4-hse-dynamic-2dr-auto/first-drive
by Ollie Kew
http://www.boscheuropean.com
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