First sight

Well its just approaching 05:00am when we are due to leave the house for a 3 hour drive from the West Coast to Inverness. Desination, our nearest LR dealer for a first sight and drive of the LRE - hope we won't be disappointed!

Tony

3 hour drive - wow, that's determination! I can assure you that you will be pleasantly satisfied on every level, especially when you are behind the wheel! Looking forward to your opinions!

Good luck Tony, hope you think it's worth the journey.
To everybody else - if you live on the North West Coast of Scotland that is a "normal" drive to the shops, even where I am on the north edge of the Central Belt we have mobile banks that drive round visiting the villages and last year we got a mobile post-office and the first supermarket that offered on-line shopping got a roaring trade as the only option otherwise was a Co-op mini market in the next village that was dirty, had grotty stock,rude staff and arbitrary opening hours. Boy did they have to buck up their service when Sainsbury and Tesco started home shopping deliveries from their stores in the nearest town!

You should live here then they don't even do online shopping and we have even a mobile library my next door neighbours are a field of cows to one side and sheep to the other side !! Lol
Kev

Just got home, what a day! need a shower and a beer (or three) will give a full run down tomorrow. Impressive, overall yes, performance a bit of a dissapontment. Drove a SD4 auto 5 door Prestige no better performance than my 25k mile '58 plate FL2 TD4 auto, maybe the Evoque was just tight at 500 miles. Still going to order one, crime not too, just need to decide on spec.

A very tired Tony

Trying to gather together my observation from yesterdays first sight. To those concerned about OG, don't, it looks really good and totally suits the car, both on the Prestige in the showroom and the Prestige we drove. By comparison on an FL2 both OG and SG look flat and bland, on the Evoque it looks fantastic, would choose it ourselves but there are going to be a lot of white/silver/grey Evoques out there.

We sat in a Dynamic Plus coupe in the showroom, black seats, black headlining, no pano roof - a bit dark, boardering on Gothmobile. Those seats seem a bit expensive when the base and 2/3 of the back seem the same as the standard seat, only advantage for us would be the height adjustment for the passenges seat. After our FL2 the wife thought she was sitting a bit low in the standard Dynamic seats, Prestige she could adjust to suit, this may dictate which model we have - if she gets her way! My view, save £3k and buy her a cushion.

Driving impression, like a very tought FL2 but with much better steering, however the quality of what surrounds you is a world better. Leg room and general driving position very, very good. Rearward visability (5 door) not as bad as we had anticipated. Rear seats, did not try them, we only use rear seats to put coats or camera gear on anyway.

Pano roof, a must but would have been better with the FL2 type roof, I still hanker after my days of open top cars.

Rear view camera, for reversing, blown away, even the yellow tracks move according to the steering wheel position. Used basic reverse cameras before on hired vans but were never worth the effort but this feature has sold the Evoque to the wife.

Road noise a little lower than FL2, also of note all six Evoques at the dealership were on Continental tyres 18, 19 and 20's.

Our spec so far, hope to order by end of this month for delivery March '12, SD4 Auto, 5 door, Pano, Spare wheel, Privacy glass, Ebony interior, Mauritious or Firenze, both with contrast roof but the real problem - Dynamic or Prestige. Dynamic exterior with Prestige interior would be ideal. We have been offered a much longer drive in a Dynamic when things calm down in a few weeks, see if the trick suspension is worth it and get to the 'bottom' of the seat height issue. If we go for the Dynamic may spec 19 wheels, too many pot holes on our roads to risk broken wheels plus I do not like the standard 20's on the Dynamic - too 'footballer' but each to their own.

Tony