Evoque disappointment at Westfield... Considering ordering? Think carefully!

We have a Range Rover Vogue, it's a few years old now, the mileage is getting quite high and so the car ideally needs to be changed. My wife dislikes driving the Vogue due to it's size, so we're looking for something of similar quality but slightly smaller to suit us both.

We were very excited by all the hype surrounding the new Evoque, and so turned up 9am sharp Saturday morning at Westfield to get a good look around all the variants in the hope that we could establish which one would be right for us.

The staff on site kindly allowed us to take a look around all the cars before invited guests turned up at 11am. We both loved the look of the car, and would have liked to go on to order one, but we just couldn't get the right combination...

IS IT JUST ME, or am I the only person thinking that £43K is a lot of money for such a small car, particularly when you can't get the spec you want!

The problems go a little bit like this:

We loved the look of the Dynamic, but we don't want the black or red dark trim options. There is of course the two tone Ivory option which could be a compromise, but then I don't want the inferior quality, perforated leather with the 'sandpaper finish dashboard', I want the premium oxford leather.

We could compromise the light trim and take the black oxford leather option offered in the Dynamic instead, but this means we have to take the firmer, and less comfortable sports seats. This option also means that the cabin will also be made darker by the fact that I'm forced to take the black headlining, as I can't select the Ivory one which I'd prefer.

We love the Ivory / Espresso interior of the prestige, but then we loose from the Dynamic, the styling and black grill to the front, and most importantly we have to accept the dull rear end of the car which seems to have been stuck on to the Prestige with very little thought, rather than the beautiful one placed on the back of the Dynamic.

Furthermore, we preferred the 5 door model, not because we have children, but because we realise the 3 door is unbearably small and suspect residuals will be stronger on the 5... Once again, there is a price you have to pay for this, in that you lose the attractive bonnet vents on the 5 door version... And so it goes on, and on!!!

I feel as if I could go on forever about the compromises that customers are being forced to make in order to get an Evoque. I think at £43k (which is what my half decent spec came too) customers shouldn't be so restricted, I suspect that this is probably due to the way that the production lines operate, but in my opinion it's really not good enough.

I do think the Evoque is a beautiful looking car, and noone can take that away from it, but if you are thinking of ordering and haven't done so already, then please think carefully, check every last detail of your spec, and to avoid disappointment make sure you know EXACTLY what your getting, or at least that your happy with any compromises.

As someone who's loved every minute of the last 4 years in his Range Rover, it saddens me greatly to say that these forced alternatives (rather than options) have lead me to conclude that I'll be waiting instead for the 2012 Mercedes ML. An extra £10k, but a lot more car, built as you want it!!

I'm not slagging off this beautiful car.... I'm just disappointed at the lack of choice Land Rover have offered... and I would urge all to check every last detail when choosing your spec.

Agree entirely with your sentiments. Enjoyed 4 yrs and 45,000 miles in my RRS. Had been looking forward to the Evoque, but the way it's packaged is frustrating.
Don't want the solid glass roof (it's been over 100f almost every day since late June) but all US models will have it. Choosing either Dynamic or Prestige trim involves compromising on features while paying around $55,000.
Looking around the market the vehicle which comes closest for me is the Audi Q5 2.0T.
It costs $45,000 fully loaded and also has a functioning sunroof, 12 way power seats up front (both seats), 8 speed tranny, better visibility, adjustable rear seats and rear fogs. Only Evoque feature not available is the heated steering wheel.
I know it's not exactly an apple to apple comparison, but to me it's the closest alternative and costs $10,000 less!!!
We also have a fully loaded 2011 F25 BMW X3 35i Msport which cost less than either the Prestige or Dynamic Evoque. While not having the looks of the Evoque, it has awesome ride, handling and performance, while using about the amount of petrol.
The Evoque has awesome looks, but removing the emotion, I feel reluctant to compromise given the price tag.

In an ideal world, everyone would have prestige interior with a Dynamic exterior. I get the thought process of LR in terms of them wanting to differentiate between the models but think they've gone about it the wrong way. In my opinion, there should be 2 models - Pure and Prestige. The Dynamic pack should be an add on to the prestige at a premium. Like they did with the HST on the Range Rover Sport.

Ive ordered the Dynamic and find it quite pathetic that I need to pay £3000 for the luxury of having height adjustment on the passenger seat and front driver seat height adjustment. Luckily for LR, most of us just like the car too much and will live with these things.

(22-08-2011 08:25am)DDX Wrote:  In my opinion, there should be 2 models - Pure and Prestige. The Dynamic pack should be an add on to the prestige at a premium. Like they did with the HST on the Range Rover Sport.

I quite agree.

As you can see from this previous poll A LOT of people agree with you.

http://babyrr.com/forum/Thread-Dynamic-O...e-Interior

Much as I hate having to option Mercs and BMWs to the hilt they do have it right. The car comes as base, luxury or sport variants but if you can get any option on on any trim level.

RR need to learn that you might want a base car but must have the biggest sound system, or phatest wheels and are quite happy with cloth seats etc. IMHO this is the only disappointment with this car. I had an ML a few years ago and we always went for the sports pack because it looked good and it made the inside less practical as it had alcantara instead of full leather. Then a year or so later in germany Merc said you could have the sports pack outside only, which meant you could have full leather of your choice inside; this seemed to be what most people then ordered.

Maybe for MY13 such things will happen for the RRE, but I suspect RR will be milking as many people as they can to upgrade from a pure to prestige or dynamic at the moment, and sadly do not really worry about guys like you allistair 1970 until the intitial rush has gone. The key to the success of the Fiat 500 and BMW Mini is that you can have the car you want, regardless of whether the majority find it tasteful or not. However, RR need to be careful else a lot of people will vote with their money to Merc, BMW or Audi.

Allister1970 - yes, I think you'll find many on the forum agree - look around a bit, it has been talked about to death!

I took the hit on the rear bodywork and went for the Prestige. It's still a fabulous looking car and if I still have issues about the rear bumper after 6 months, I'll see what can be done about retrofitting some dynamic bodywork (quite a few people on here are keen to do the same).

You all forget one thing............. this car is a clean sheet design, new to a market sector LR is not familiar with. The bean counters/ spec deciders had to have something to get the ball rolling and even in the most basic form Range Rovers have always been very comprehensively equipped. I think you will find that at the first facelift there will be big changes to the specs once LR has found what people want in their Evoque, less popular options will quietly be dropped and new ones will appear. Many years ago I wanted to buy a Volvo V40 (I ended up with a V8i ES Disco1 instead!) - the local Volvo dealer quoted me an 11 month lead in time for the spec that I had chosen because in those days (not THAT long ago, in 1996) they had a policy of you could have any option on any model - virtually every car ended up being hand built (badly at that!) because the options lists were so extensive. It also made valuing early build cars very difficult. I'm not saying LR is right with what they have done but they had to start somewhere and now they are getting lots of fed-back which is great. You can be assured that there isn't just one but several LR marketing and members of the Evoque team reading this forum, I'm sure that everything you post about is taken away and closely analysed to see if it is possible - just don't expect any huge changes before the end of 2011!

Yeah, but they could at least open few Mercedes, BMW or Audi catalogs for few of their models and see how can you customize their cars. Maybe you cannot put a contrasting roof on a S-Class , but you can put, for example, the Intelligent Lighting System on each C, E, GLK... It doesn't have to do anything with styling so why limit it like LR did with the Adaptive lights for example. Or what does Adaptive Dynamics had to do with the Prestige/Dynamic styling?

I think land rover could have made a few more packs rather than tech,style and lux. When I order freelanders in the past you could have any interior in any car, if your car didn't have heated windscreen you could buy the cold climate pack, also had the design pack ,premium pack etc. But I think these are minor setbacks for an otherwise stunning car.

Once Evoque production is fully established, I expect they will introduce a "Custom" or completely customisable version where you can have exactly what you want. They need to, the existing options are too limiting. The downside of such flexibility is resale value because most of the discretionary choices simply add to resale appeal rather than value.