Second generation Range Rover Evoque comes over all grown-up

Whichever it is, the one thing for certain is that the new Evoque enters a different world from the one it first burst into with its concept-car looks, sassy appeal and celebrity connections (courtesy of Victoria Beckham) seven years ago.

Today you can get premium compact SUVs from all the posh manufacturers, including models at the forefront of electrification and connectivity. Competition for the Evoque is stiff and getting stiffer by the month, including some potential in-house rivalry from the bigger but equally road-biased Range Rover Velar. Plenty of challenges for the new model then.

Land Rover’s response is comprehensive. The Mk2’s all-new body, on a reworked platform, offers more passenger and luggage room, comes with 48-volt electrics and a mild hybrid drive system, gets some useful-sounding party tricks involving cameras, and – for many the clincher – reprises familiar Evoque design cues as part of a smart new look.

It does appear more grown-up now though, not quite as dramatically wedgy as the concept car that morphed into production car virtually unchanged for Evoque MkI. With those bulging front wheelarches, signature side grilles, tapering glasshouse and powerful stance (21-inch wheels available) it still couldn’t be anything but an Evoque. The lights are very Range Rovery now, and a nice touch is the flush door handles. But is the whole a little less coupe-like than before?

One reason for that may be because the Evoque is now resolutely five-door. The first Evoque launched originally in both three-door “coupe” and five-door forms, but the three-door (and the convertible it later sired) was always a niche player and was discontinued last year. There’s no word of a three-door in the new range.

Another reason for the more grown-up appeal is that it looks in pictures to have grown in size. In fact it hasn’t. The car occupies virtually the same amount of blacktop as before, which, rather surprisingly, makes it slightly shorter than a Ford Focus.

The wheelbase, though, has grown by 20mm which, says Land Rover, directly translates into 20mm (almost an inch) of extra rear seat kneeroom. That will be welcome. The boot is larger as well: seats up, it can swallow an impressive 591 litres of stuff, including (with one eye on typical Evoque owners’ lifestyles) golf bags or a folded pram. The new Evoque can tow up to 750kg

Practical enough to have instead of a Velar? Unlikely. They might share Range Rover design sophistication but the Velar, at 430mm longer, remains a substantially larger car, as well as at least £10,000 more expensive against a roughly equivalent entry-level model from the new Evoque range.

That would be  an Evoque with a 180PS (178bhp) diesel engine, all-wheel-drive and automatic transmission. List price: £35,850. This, and a £750 less expensive 150PS (148bhp) version, is likely to be the entry Evoque for most people – it’s the cheapest automatic, and Evoques have always been mostly autos. But hang on, the actual entry model is £4,000 less than that.

With a tag of £31,600 the cheapest new Evoque is basically the same price as the outgoing car. It’s a diesel with 150PS, has a manual box and is front-wheel-drive only. As such it won’t suit all, but Land Rover obviously thinks it important as a tempting price leader for a model that in the past has attracted 60 per cent of its customers from other makes.

There’s no denying though that £4,000 is a hefty step between models, so what does the upgrade buy you apart from the nine-speed auto ‘box and all-wheel-drive? The news here is 48-volt electrics and a mild hybrid system, the first Land Rover has done.

This is a starter-generator system – so can’t drive the car on battery power alone – which works by harvesting energy normally lost in deceleration and braking and deploying it to give the combustion engine a helping hand, with the primary aim being lower emissions and greater efficiency rather than more performance. In keeping with that, the engine turns itself off below 11mph.

Aside from the token diesel manual, there are six models in the new range. Three are diesel and three are petrol, all 2.0-litre four-pot engines, and all come as standard with this mild hybrid system. All have all-wheel drive and automatic transmissions, and feature power outputs ranging from 150 to 240PS for the oil burners, and 200-300PS for the petrol variants. The cleanest is the diesel with 50.4mpg and 149g/km of CO₂, while the top petrol version with 300PS (296bhp) takes the performance crown with 6.3 seconds for the 0-60mph dash and a top speed of 150mph.

Electrified Evoques don’t stop there. A major benefit of using the new platform is that it has been reworked for battery power, in line with Land Rover’s pledge that all its new vehicles from 2020 will be electrified. Land Rover is promising that within a year a more efficient plug-in hybrid version, hooked up to a three-cylinder petrol engine, will join the range. Unlike the mild (MHEV) hybrid, the plug-in variety (PHEV) will be able to tootle along on electric power alone.

What else is new? Plenty of luxury – for Land Rover the emphasis here is on sustainable materials, including a leather alternative suede-cloth made from recycled plastic bottles. There is also a clean new “digital minimalist” interior design, and lots of clever features.

One is ClearSight, a reversing camera that you can use while driving forwards if, for example, you have the boot loaded to the roof and can’t see what’s behind. You flick a switch and the mirror turns into a high-definition video screen with a feed from a video camera mounted high up at the back. It’s Land Rover’s take on the video rear-view screens in the new Audi e-tron.

Then there’s Ground View. This uses camera imagery projected on to one of the dashboard touchscreens to effectively make the bonnet “vanish” by displaying what the road surface under the front of the car looks like. Apparently it’s useful when negotiating speed humps or tackling rough terrain.

Yes, the Evoque will still do rough terrain. In fact, says Land Rover, it will now wade through 600mm of water when the old one could only manage 500mm. There’s an option called Wade Sensing which measures the depth for you and displays it on the central touchscreen. Not much call for it in Knightsbridge, perhaps, but still nice to know it’s there.

All the 4wd versions get the latest Terrain Response 2 technology that first appeared on the full-size Range Rover. The system’s auto model detects the surface being driven on and adjusts the set-up accordingly. For road driving the new body’s stiffer structure is claimed to offer a quieter cabin and smoother ride. A new feature for the Evoque is Active Driveline, an electronic torque vectoring system that balances torque between front and rear axles when cornering.

Inevitably many of the features mentioned are options or available as part of a “trim walk”. The designations are familiar – S, SE, HSE – and come in roughly £3,000 steps, plus at the top there’s an Evoque with the works called the First Edition. Plus there’s an R Dynamic trim package for £1,500. With the most potent petrol or diesel Evoques in base form costing around the £40k mark, by the time you add your goodies you will have no trouble passing £50,000.

The good news is that for £20k less than that the spec seems pretty complete – heated seats, rear camera, LED lights, 40-20-40 split rear backrests – although you have to go up a level to get navigation and smartphone apps like Android Auto and Apple CarPlay.

So that’s our first look at the new Range Rover Evoque, one of Britain’s (and Land Rover’s) great automotive success stories. It was a good idea then and likely to be an even better idea now… there probably won’t be a Victoria Beckham edition this time round though.