2013 Land Rover Range Rover Evoque Review and Road Test

Alex L. Dykes takes the 2013 Land Rover Range Rover Evoque Pure out on the road. Check out our video as we talk infotainment, navigation, engines, cargo room, fuel economy, pricing and more.

Hi i’m alex dykes the truth about cars calm and today we’re taking a look at the 2013 range rover evoque now over the past few years range rover has become more of a model line for land rover than a single model so of course we have the full-size range rover we have the range rover sport which is mid-sized suv and then we have this new range rover evoque which

Is a basically an suv for urbanites so under the hood we still have all-wheel drive like you’d expect an arranged over product but we also have a fuel-efficient 2-liter turbo engine let’s hop in and take a look under the hood of the evoque we have a ford sourced 2 liter turbo engine this particular engine produces 240 horsepower and 250 pound feet of torque has

Variable valve timing as well as direct injection now power is sent to all four wheels via a 6-speed automatic transmission and a haldex all field drive system it’s essentially the same setup that we have in the volvo xc60 as well as the land rover lr2 normally when a luxury car manufacturer makes a smaller vehicle the interior gets cheaper as well now that holds

True for just about everybody in the business if you buy a c-class it’s not quite as nice as an s class if you buy a 3-series it’s not quite as nice as a 7 series here in the range rover evoque it’s a little bit different and quite unusual because this range rover evoque has a cabin that in some ways is nicer than the next step up which would be the range rover

Sport we’re in the base model evoke and even this model has a stitched pleather – no this isn’t leather but it is a stitch – so all these pieces were cut individually then stitched back together it really dresses up this interior you know more than you would think you have to get an one to really see all these trim panels are real aluminium and they have a great

Feel to them everything in this car just is very well put together and the components are very very nice definitely belonging in a much more expensive vehicle just in terms of feel now we get a nice lcd screen in between the gauges as well in this particular car and the only downside in this particular vehicle is this airbag cover which although not bad does feel

A little bit ordinary and everything else in this cabin feels so great now you step up a notch in the range rover evoque line to the prestige model then you get an even nicer interior with softer leather leather – bits etc one item that does seem to be skimped on however is the range of motion in this electric seat and most suvs in this particular segment have

Sort of an 8 or 10 way adjustable power seat either way the seat bottom can either raise up and raise down as a single unit can tilt forward tilt backwards etc that doesn’t happen in the range where evoque only the back of the seat lifts up and down leaving the front of the seat fixed so this means that i don’t really have enough thigh support for me in this

Particular vehicle also the range of motion in the lumbar support isn’t as large as i thought it would be in a vehicle like this rear seat comfort in the evoque is very good these seat bottom cushions are higher off the floor than they are in many mass-market crossovers making it more comfortable for adults in the rear these rear seats also fold flat with the

Cargo area allowing you to dump larger cargo in the crossover in our particular models equipped with this enormous skylight now this is a fixed piece of glass but you can see it extends well beyond my head in the rear and all the way up to the front as well legroom in the evoque of course is a little bit lower than you would find in something like a volvo xc60

Because of course this is a smaller vehicle and this front seat is adjusted for me at 6 feet tall and i do have a little bit of room left but if i was a taller driver or i liked a seating position that was more rearward then you would have trouble fitting adults in the rear the range rover evoque scores 5 out of 10 points in our exclusive trunk comfort index

It loses some points of course for the trunk being quite small now you’ve noticed on the outside of the evoque the rear is sloped quite a bit and that means that the rear window is a little bit small it does impact visibility a little bit but it also impacts rear cargo room now here in the rear i have the largest roller bag you can carry on a domestic flight so

You can see you couldn’t carry too many of those in the evoque we do however gain a few points for having trunk hinges this is a power trunk that don’t impact on the cargo area in the back of the evoque it is now time to take a look at infotainment systems in the range rover evoque we’ll start off here with a steering wheel on the left we have our phone buttons

And our voice command button we have our cruise control buttons over here on the right have our radio volume up/down track forward backward and mode button over here we have our multi-information control button here now that button controls this display in between the speedometer and the tachometer over here in the center console you can see we have our climate

Control here this dual zone climate control on the range rover evoque now none of these functions are repeated on the multi information display up here this is a completely separate system and right above that we have our power volume knob track forward backward and our cd changer in – right here as well higher up in the dash we have an 8 inch lcd that is borrowed

From the jaguar xj and this is a bit of a good thing because the rest of the range rover product line has an nav system that’s getting pretty old let’s be honest now this system has as you can see more modern mapping software also has a 3d mode as you’d expect these days over here on the audio/video screen since we have the up level system we also have access to

Our satellite radio we have access to our usb devices if you click the little plus button again you can also see that we have access to a dvd player that’s the in – dvd player as well as an optional cd changer we have access to bluetooth streaming as well as well as an aux input in the center of the console back on the main menu you can see that we have shortcuts

To our audio settings take me home our phone book and extra features now one of the nice features about the range rover evoque is that it does have an optional all-around view camera now this is very much like infiniti is all around view or bmws multi camera systems there’s a problem though because in those other systems there’s a shortcut button to see the

Camera and here you know if you press this little p button you get the parking sensor so if we were in drive we’ll put it in drive so you can see little p sensor lights up and you can hear the parking sensors around because we’re in a parking lot and if you put it in reverse we do get a backup camera and we have the narrow and wide views for the backup camera

But you’ll notice that there’s no way to use those all-around view cameras unless we go here to the home menu hit the extra features button and then hit cameras and now you can see the different cameras that are in the car is one here and one here one up here one back here and another one right over here ok so now you know where the cameras are so these are the

Front two cameras on the front bumper this is the camera under that side view mirror on the left now we also have these special views which is the junction view that’s just the two cameras up front and we have the curved view which is the two side camera so you can see it looks like we have a very narrow car because we’re just seeing that me the cameras under

Each side view mirror you also have the option of selecting any of these two images that you want and combining them into one view by hitting the enlarge button so now you can see behind me and up front and these cameras are active at any speed so you can be to land down the freeway at 70 miles an hour and view all of your little cameras which is pretty good

The problem is it’s not as useful as the all-around view camera from infinity or bmw because it doesn’t stitch them together now that being said the camera quality is better than the infinity system or the bmw system most notably the infinity system is pretty good but the bmw system not only does it not show the front of the car at all it really just shows the

The two sides in the rear but the camera quality is strangely bad the contrast is always off i’ve never been able to get any of the bmw models with that system to have a really good image on them and the image here is pretty good but again the usefulness is a little bit limited going back to the ipod for just a second here you can see that the interface is much

Different than the rest of the range rover lineup or the jaguar xf again this is much more like the jaguar xj since it’s using essentially the same software this means that the responsiveness on the display is much much much better than the previous system as you would expect we can browse our playlists our genres our artists etc we have full access to the ipod

Or usb device in that respect but there are still no voice commands in this system although that’s really not a big problem in the luxury segment because none of the luxury segment competitors really offer voice commands in this at this time back at the navigation system address entry is fairly easy but the system is not as responsive as i would like so if we

Enter a house number here you can see it it lagged a little bit there but it lags a bit more when you’re entering a road here as you can see the amount of time it takes to allow you to enter the next road in the system now the one nice thing however is that you can enter an address at any time in the system including while you’re in motion now obviously that

Would be so that your passenger could enter an address for you but if you did have a situation where it was an emergency needed to enter an address while you were driving it is possible in this system much like i drive into mmi and honestly stabbing the screen like this i don’t find that any more distracting than twiddling a little idrive knob so i can’t blame

Them for doing this in fact i’d prefer that they let me make my choice as to whether i want to take my eyes off the road to enter an address rather than restrict that for me because again that pat your passenger can enter an address for you in this system our evoque is also equipped with the optional 17 speaker 825 watt sound system now aside from the sound system

Sounding like it belongs in a much more expensive car we also get some interesting surround options which i really haven’t seen in a vehicle before we have our choice of you know no surround we have dts neo six doubled latest version of dolby pro logic 2 x and of course we get a customer ideon sound package now that sort of is what meridian thinks a multi-channel

Surround sound system should be like sounds quite like dts neo 6 if i’m honest the range rover evoque starts just over $44,000 so it be careful with those options because the price can escalate rather rapidly topping out just over $60,000 for a fully loaded model now our particular model here as tested rang in just under $50,000 as i said the evoque is sort of the

City-dwellers crossover vehicle and that really makes sense when you drive it out on a winding california road like this and that’s because the evoque has a fairly stiff suspension fairly low-profile tyres for a crossover vehicle and handles exceptionally well now there’s not a whole lot of steering feel as you’d expect in any modern vehicle but there is a little

Bit and it’s probably a bit more than i had expected to be honest the steering is fairly firm the only downer out here on this winding road is that this transmission is just not a psychic as the zf 6-speed that’s used in the other range rover vehicles or even the zf 8-speed that’s used in the new bmw x1 and x3 that stiff suspension means that when you take your

Evoke even out on a well-maintained gravel road like we’re on right now the stiff suspension does make for a somewhat jarring ride it’s it’s something that might bother me if i was really buying this and lived out in the country because it is definitely more designed for on pavement use although the range rover evoque does handle very well it is obvious out on

These winding mountain roads that it is a front wheel drive bias platform with a fairly heavy nose now it’s not to say there’s any sort of torque steer going on here because there really isn’t any in the evoque it really locks up that haldex unit frequently and for long periods of time allowing the evoque to be very neutral handling that hallux unit is also why

The range rover evoque get such good highway fuel economy because if you’re at a steady speed on the highway going 70 miles an hour or so then the car is really sending almost all that power to the front wheels and it’s completely disconnecting that clutch pack so there’s really no power going to the rear wheels that’s what allows this range rover evoque to get

28 miles per gallon on the highway about 20 in the city or so with a combined rating of about 21 to 22 in our mix driving over 800 miles a 240 horsepower motivating 4000 pounds makes the evoque sort of quick but not exactly fast it’s not exactly slow either we hit zero to 60 in just about seven seconds and so that’s a fairly respectable number for a crossover

Vehicle but it’s not as lightning quick as any of the range rovers with their supercharged v8 perhaps trying to compensate for that range rover equipped the evoke with very aggressive throttle mapping makes it a little bit difficult to take off from a stoplight slowly and it probably makes you feel a little bit faster than you really are thankfully the 2 liter

Turbo engine has a very broad torque curve and while there is a little bit of turbo lag between idle and say about 1,500 rpm or so it’s really not very noticeable honestly comparisons with the evoque are kind of difficult because other than the bmw x1 i’m really not sure what you’d cross shops surely you could cross shop the lr 2 or the volvo xc60 on which both

Of these are ultimately kind of sort of based or you can compare it to the bmw x1 x3 the mercedes glk the audi q5 etc but the evoque is quite small compared to some of those other than the bmw x1 that is and some people try and equate it to the mini countryman but i think that’s really being unfair to land rover because honestly the countryman just isn’t as nice

If you’ve sat inside a countryman and then you sat inside this it’s like going from a nissan versa to alexis so who is the range rover evoque for well it’s really for that city person that person that wants a range rover and they want that range rover style but they don’t need the full off-road capabilities or the size of the full-sized range rover models now

Our particular model is just about as capable as any of the smaller jeeps off-road this has a very similar all-wheel drive system haldex unit sending power to the rear can lock it and it can send about 50% of the power to the rear but it won’t get you out of the same kind of sticky situations that you’d be able to get out of in a full-size range rover

Transcribed from video
2013 Land Rover Range Rover Evoque Review and Road Test By Alex on Autos