Handling Found Wanting
I realise that many here are not interested in how the car handles and instead are more concerned with how the car looks inside and out and with fiddling endlessly with the Sat Nav and Bluetooth connectivity while being lulled into a pleasant soporific state of mind by the driving experience. Bit like smoking pot, I think.
Me, I look for a more sporting experience and I had hoped the combination of the higher powered and lighter petrol engine, lighter 3 door dynamic coupe (albeit with the heavy high-up glass roof to mess things up) and the adaptive damping would make for a reasonably sporting drive.
A journey home of 50 miles on the motorway and a favourite B road north of Oxford to Chipping Norton have left me disappointed.
It turns out the engine power is easily enough for the chassis to handle - there's enough grunt to get the car up to speed and to execute safe overtakes, though there's a flurry of activity in the gearbox and frantic noise from the engine while you do it. The higher torque of the diesel might make for a more relaxed flexible drive but you ultimately run out of power.
The real issue is that, for a car labelled "Dynamic", the suspension is not good enough. First, at motorway cruising speeds (and I'll leave you to think where those might be in relation to the speed limit), the car has a tendency to float after responding to undulations in the road, it's as if the suspension is fast to react and slow to settle and, for the first time in a long time, made me feel nauseous. Then, when you press on on a winding country road, the alarming body roll inevitably causes you to back off even if things are fine on the ground.
That favourite road has a tight 200m S-bend with clear visibility and significant unsettling undulations and you can take up the whole road if you want to. My little Subaru and 911 are absolutely fine at speeds which have passengers reaching for the door handles. The Evoque last night was all over the place at 50 mph, rolling from side to side even though I was able to place the car exactly where I wanted to though the roll does unsettle the car. Of course, it's not a Subaru Impreza, still less is it a 911 turbo but it does have the magic dampers and I do not think LR have been brave enough in the Dynamic to make the suspension match the name.
Even with the Dynamic ADS profile, the suspension is too soft and squidgy (technical term) and the roll resistance poor. It's barely different in truth from the normal setting and setting the instrument lights on fire to show a beast has been unleashed is a little wide of the mark.
I'd like to see a much more sporting profile - a harder ride, but faster responding suspension with the dampers being stiffened on the outside of a corner to improve roll resistance. A more neutral handling Evoque would be a better drive. As it is, the car is great up to, say, 70% of the handling limit. Press on to explore those limits and it all becomes a bit ragged.
Roll on the Evoque Sport. If Porsche can do with it with the Cayenne and will do it again with the Macan, so can LR with the Evoque.
Mark
Evoque was great, now in an RRS SVR
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Handling Found Wanting
