THE all-new Range Rover Evoque will make its public debut in Paris tomorrow.

The Evoque brings Land Rover’s LRX concept car into production reality, faithfully capturing the original design of the striking cross-coupe concept.

In keeping with the ethos of Range Rover, the Evoque delivers premium levels of craftsmanship, luxury, performance and Land Rover all-terrain capability in a more compact package.

The Evoque’s turbocharged powertrain line-up blends four-cylinder efficiency with six-cylinder refinement and power.

Customers can choose between two advanced 2.2-litre turbodiesel derivatives, with either 187bhp or 147bhp.

The front-wheel drive Evoque with the 147bhp engine achieves 58mpg and emits 130g/km of CO, while the four-wheel-drive version delivers 50mpg and emits 145g/km of CO.

A new 236bhp, two-litre Si4 petrol engine combines direct fuel injection and turbocharging to deliver a 0-60mph time of 7.1 seconds.

The Evoque will offer customers the choice of three main design themes – Pure, Prestige and Dynamic.

Pure combines the concept-car exterior with a stylish, clean interior in neutral colours. Soft-touch materials on the major surfaces contrast with the metal-brushed aluminium trim.

Prestige is the ultimate in Range Rover luxury, combining 19in wheels and sparkling metallic details with an interior that is almost entirely leather-wrapped.

Dynamic brings a bolder exterior with 20in wheels and unique bumpers, sills, grille and tailpipes for a more assertive stance. Contrasting roof and spoiler colours are available, while the premium sports interior offers sports seats.

The Range Rover Evoque will go on sale next summer, with prices from £30,000.

This article was taken from: pressandjournal.co.uk

Land Rover has released the first official pictures of its new Range Rover Evoque, a luxurious, crossover-coupé design that’s charged with attracting new customers.

It goes on sale next summer and makes its world debut at the Paris Motor Show 2010 next week.

The Evoque, which was unveiled in June at a glittering party attended by new Land Rover consultant Victoria Beckham, is shorter and lower than the Range Rover Sport.

Gerry McGovern, Land Rover’s design director, said: “The Range Rover Evoque marks a bold evolution of Range Rover design by adopting new interpretations of classic design cues and staying true to the core Range Rover values.

“With its dramatic rising beltline, a muscular shoulder running the length of the car, and a distinctive taper to the floating roofline, the Evoque adopts a very dynamic profile with a powerful and athletic stance.”

Land Rover is keen to promote the sustainability of its latest cars – the Evoque will be the first Land Rover to offered with front-wheel drive in order to lower CO2 emissions.

It will use a range of turbocharged, four-cylinder petrol and diesel engines. A new, 238bhp, 2.0-litre Si4 petrol engine is claimed to combine the performance and refinement of a six-cylinder engine with four-cylinder fuel economy. There will be two derivatives of the 2.2-litre diesel, delivering 148bhp or 187bhp. The lower-powered version is claimed to deliver up to 58mpg, with sub-130g/km of CO2.

All diesel engines with manual transmissions will feature stop-start systems to further reduce emissions, while an updated six-speed automatic transmission will be offered with petrol and diesel engines.

Inside, the Evoque features the same high quality materials as larger Range Rovers. Customers will be able to specify further luxury fitments, including leather cladding, while authentic metal finishes provide a striking contrast.

An all-new chassis specification delivers dynamic and agile handling across all terrains. Drivers who enjoy venturing off-road will be glad to hear that Land Rover hasn’t rejected its roots – the Evoque has a significantly better breakover angle, approach angle and departure angle than other premium compact SUVs.

Dr Ralf Speth, CEO, Jaguar Land Rover, said: “The Evoque helps to define a new segment for premium compact SUVs that are more sporting and stylish. It makes a strong statement about the future direction of the Range Rover brand and will have a powerful emotional appeal to a very broad range of premium car buyers.”

Phil Popham, managing director of Land Rover, said: “The groundbreaking, all-new Evoque takes the brand into exciting new territory. Highly relevant and contemporary, the Evoque will appeal to a whole new group of customers who may not have considered a Range Rover before.”

Dr Speth continued: “This vehicle has been designed, engineered and will be manufactured in the UK, allowing the creation of more than 1,000 jobs at our Halewood plant in Merseyside. This employment boost, paired with the fact that over 80 per cent of Range Rover Evoque production is planned for export, will be a fantastic support to the UK economy.”

This article was taken from: telegraph.co.uk

In anticipation of Range Rover’s upcoming new model launch, Timothy Saccenti has produced some amazing images that capture the idea behind the new Range Rover Evoque – the brand’s first compact city car designed with the urban driver in mind. The Evoque is a smaller, lighter and greener model ideal for those living in cities with different space, traffic and lifestyle needs than those in more spacious locales (i.e., the ‘burbs). The Evoque positions the brand in the center of a modern, connected, and urban world.

Saccenti describes how he took inspiration from the concept behind the model:

Taking inspiration from the blurs of light one experiences speeding through the city at night, I used a multitude of various lighting sources and painted the car with these lights. I wanted to create and atmosphere of abstract energy for the car, rather than a literal description of it. For this project we brought in diffraction grating, a material, which splits up light and spreads it in different directions. We were using it to create a prismatic effect to some of our lighting passes, which helped to add depth. We used various wave lengths of light including near-ultraviolet. The exposures were long, up to five minutes. We were moving light through time and space to sculpt the feeling of movement and energy. The lines of the body of the car were beautiful and fluid and took to this technique well.

Saccenti is part of a group of 40 international collaborators handpicked by Range Rover for the ‘pulse of the city’ campaign. Collaborators were picked from the arts, creative industries, film, fashion and music, in order to speak to a new kind of Range Rover driver – one that lives in a city (or a more urbane lifestyle), and that may not have been as well served by the brand’s larger, more spacious models.

The Evoque campaign offers an example of how brands can partner with members of the Global creative community in order to facilitate the brand acting and feeling ’smaller’ – and to create ideas and activations that embody the benefits that a new brand proposition and product are meant to deliver to customers.

This article was taken from: psfk.com

The old saying goes that familiarity breeds contempt. That may be so in some circumstances, but in my case, familiarity has bred content. I’d never really been on Land Rover’s radar, and so only viewed these chunky – and to my eye, clunky – vehicles at auto shows, or the few times I saw one on the road. Having spent some seat time in them, including the smallest of the bunch, the 2010 LR2, I’ve come to appreciate the brand, which combines rough-and-ready off-road ability with some seriously luxurious interior touches.

Whether I’d actually buy one might be more up in the air: they also have a well-earned reputation for gremlins, and indeed, my LR2 was the first Land Rover I’d driven where everything worked for the full week – rather ironic, given that it was also my least-expensive tester. Still, if you have faith in the warranty, this is a sweet machine among compact sport utility vehicles.

Overseas, the LR2 is known as the Freelander 2. In Canada, it comes only in the well-equipped HSE trim line, starting at $44,950. Mine was one of only fifty produced for 2010 as a Sport Limited Edition vehicle. My tester included all sorts of options, including exterior body kit, unique 19-inch “diamond-turned” wheels, two-tone leather seats, navigation system, Dolby surround-sound system, metallic trim, and any colour I wanted, providing it was either Lago Grey or my tester’s Santorini Black. The final tally was $53,170 before taxes and freight. It’s a lot of money, but then, that’s the nature of the brand.

It uses a 3.2-litre inline six-cylinder, producing 230 horsepower and 234 lb-ft of torque, mated strictly to a six-speed automatic that includes manual shift mode. These straight-line engines are typically very smooth, and the LR2 is no exception. It snaps sharply off the line, but with a portly curb weight of 1,930 kilograms (4,255 lbs), it gets a little flat as you go further up the speedometer. Once it hits its cruising altitude, though, it’s content to sail along easily, as it proved on a five-hour road trip. The official published figures are 14.1 L/100 km (20 mpg Imp) in the city and 9.1 (31) on the highway. Overall, with most of my driving on rural highways, I averaged 10.5 L/100 km (27 mpg Imp), with a recommendation for premium fuel.

While it still has off-road chops, the LR2 is the “little brother” to its more rough-and-ready LR3 and Range Rover siblings (although, when you’re up at the top end, I wonder how many people actually take their $100,000-plus Rovers very far off the beaten path). It includes a version of their Terrain Response control, which can be dialed in to one of four optimal settings for general driving, grass/gravel/snow, mud and ruts, and sand; it automatically adjusts the traction control, stability program, throttle response and other systems for optimal performance in each situation. Hill descent control is also included, but there’s no low range. The four-wheel system is biased toward the front wheels, but it takes only a slight touch of wheel slip to get some of that torque heading toward the rear.

The steering isn’t all that sharp, but it’s a pleasant driver nevertheless. It feels exceptionally well-planted, even on a couple of highway stretches that could have earned me some serious discussion time with the boys in blue. The ride is smooth, but never squishy, and despite its height, there’s very little leaning into the corners. The brakes bring it down from speed with confident pedal feel, albeit with a bit of nosedive on hard stops. It’s easy to spin it around tight parking lots, but while there’s a sonar warning when backing up, a back-up camera is not available, even when the navigation system is ordered.

The interior is handsome, and while naturally not as luxuriously finished as its more expensive siblings, the fit-and-finish is very good, and the materials are high-quality. I like the relative simplicity of the climate controls, which let you adjust the mode by simply hitting the appropriate button; when the system is left in automatic mode, the driver and passenger dial in their preferred temperatures. The stereo controls are a bit more finicky, but almost all of their functions can still be figured out without having to delve into the owner’s manual.

I have a major dislike of the ignition, however, which requires that you first insert the brick-shaped key into a slot in the dash, and then press a starter button. On top of that unnecessary two-step, you have to reach in and press the key in order to activate a tiny motor that pushes it back out when leaving the vehicle. It’s difficult to do, even with my small fingers, given that it’s deep in the dash and the attachment for a key ring is in the way. Beyond that, given the electrical gremlins I’ve experienced with other Land Rover models, I have my doubts about anything that requires an electric motor to hand me back my key.

Getting my other complaints about the interior out of the way, there is no holder for sunglasses, the lovely seats get very hard after about three hours on the road, and it has rain-sensing wipers, which are easily confused by drizzle, and should be replaced with the gold standard: variable intermittent wipers. No essential safety feature that works “most of the time” is acceptable in my books, although given that there seem to be a lot of people who prefer that the vehicle do the work of figuring out when it’s raining, I’m pretty much spitting into the wind on this one.

In the “on the fence” category are the armrests: I like that they can be moved up or down into almost any position, but it can be awkward to twist the little knobs that lock them into place. In the big-thumbs-up category, I have the cruise control, which is dead-simple and easy to use; the straightforward instrument cluster; the navigation system, again easy to figure out without training; and the cool chrome strips on the steering wheel that operate the horn, just Rear-seat passengers get fairly decent legroom, and there’s a lot of space under the front seats for slipping feet to increase the comfort level. With the seats up, the cargo compartment is 90 cm long. Folding the rear seats is easy to do: first you flip up the cushion, and then pull down the seatback, which slips into place without having to remove the head restraint. This gets you a cargo length of 155 cm. The cargo area also includes tie-downs and a soft retractable cover.

It’s a crowded spot in the compact SUV segment, and for most people, Land Rover isn’t on the list: it’s pricey, and its reputation for reliability hasn’t earned it too many J.D. Power awards. Still, there’s pretty much a vehicle for everyone, and those who take the LR2 for a spin around the block might find themselves with quite the soft spot for it. It is, indeed, a vehicle where getting your butt into the seat and out on the road – or the off-road – makes all the difference in perception.

This article was taken from: canadiandriver.com

WE turn the spotlight on automotive’s newest and brightest stars, as we ask the questions to which you want the answers. Ultimately, however, there is only one question that really needs answering – would you buy one?

What is it?

The V8 is Land Rover’s most expensive Discovery and incidentally the only one that comes with a petrol engine. But unlike the Range Rover you can only get the V8 in naturally aspirated form. There’s no petrol V6 anymore.

How much?

Sharp intake of breath. $126,460 before on-road costs. That’s $31,000 more than the arguably better TDV6 HSE turbo diesel and almost double the price of the entry level 2.7-litre diesel. I know which I’d be buying.

What are the competitors?

The top-of-the-line and larger Landcruiser 200 Series as well as some of the luxury sports utility vehicles like the Q7, X5 and ML – maybe even Land Rover’s own V8 Range Rover Sport.

What’s under the bonnet?

5.0-litre direct injection V8 delivers 276kW of power and and 510Nm of torque. Beautifully smooth and not as thirsty as you might think. Has variable camshaft timing system, variable inlet manifold, and camshaft profile switching on the inlet camshaft.

How does it go?

Very competently, but not sports car fast like the supercharged version in the Range Rover. 0-100km/h takes 7.9 seconds and it’s paired with a revised and version of the acclaimed ZF HP28 six-speed automatic transmission.

Is it economical?

Rated at 14.1 litres/100km. We were getting 13.3 litres/100km over a distance of 457km. If you’re worried about economy, buy the diesel.

Is it ‘Green?’

Gets 2 1/2 stars under the Government Green Vehicle Guide (5 is best). It is after all a big V8 powered four-wheel drive.

Is it safe?

Yet to be tested under the Euro or Australian new car assessment program but the previous model scored four out of five, so this one is expected to do well too.

Is it comfortable?

Lots of luxury appoints. Armchair seating, high end Harman-Kardon audio, rear screen entertainment pack includes DVD six-disc changer, two headphones, remote control and rear headphone module.

What’s it like to drive?

A real no brainer. Easy to drive, responsive to the throttle, high driving position makes it easy to see everything. Even off road where the Disco reigns supreme, it’s simply a matter of twiddling a dial to select the appropriate type of terrain that you are travelling over.

Is it value for money?

You get a lot for your money and you’d want to. There’s even a surround camera system that displays several different views of the immediate surrounds.

Would we buy one?

Definitely one of favourite 4WDs and it would be the first one on our shopping list. Still some questions over reliability so speak to someone who owns one first.

OUT OF 5:

looks . . . 4.5
performance . . . 4
practicality . . . 4
comfort . . . 4
economy . . . 3
value . . . 4
safety . . . 4
enviro . . . 2.5
tech . . . 4.5
dynamics . . . 4

TOTAL: 4

This article was taken from: Liverpool Leader