Oct 9 Autocar - Evoque XL and Porsche Macan

This week's autocar has just arrived in my email and items of interest to us all are:
a) New Evoque XL to come in 2016 with all aluminium chassis and body, Hotfire 4 cylinder gasoline and diesel
engines and based on the new small Jaguar floorpan. To be the most econonical Land Rover ever (yeh yeh ,
we've heard that before, hopefully this one won't be a huge flog like the Evoque's economy figures are and
might even relate to something we the people who don't get to drive day in day out in a lab might get on the
open road!) Autocar predicts pricing between £41k and £55k.

b) Autocar has a day in the Porsche Macan in the USA - OK so it's shrowded in disguises but by god it's one ugly
car from every angle - they claim it has nothing that can be associated with the Q5 it is based on but it certainly
looks like one from the Mr Blobby shape. Runs circles around the SQ5 too with it's 3.6litre V6 engines in various
tunes and various numbers of turbos. There is also the V6 twin turbo diesel from the SQ5 and a Hybrid diesel/
electric to come. UK launch expected to be in November.

c) At the back in "our cars" section is their final report on the Evoque they have been running for a year

Thank Tim, very interesting.
The Macan and Q5 S must be putting pressure on Landrover to bring out the Evoque RS? Irrespective of how ugly the competitors are???

Yes, very interesting. I expect the Evoque's day in the sun is coming to an end and the Macan will run rings around it on road and in its build quality. Maybe the Evoque will still be better off-road and it will certainly be less expensive when the Macan is optioned up to be like-for-like. The top of the Macan range will also tread on the toes of the RRS, so it's not just the Evoque which is under threat.

The good news is that it will prevent LR resting on their laurels.

I've visited the plant in Leipzig where it will be made and there's no doubting Porsche's commitment. Whether I could live with an Audi sourced engine running on a Q5 platform, I don't know. LR need to get on and build me my RRS, otherwise I might just be tempted.

(09-10-2013 12:56am)XFullFatTim Wrote:  This week's autocar has just arrived in my email and items of interest to us all are:
a) New Evoque XL to come in 2016 with all aluminium chassis and body, Hotfire 4 cylinder gasoline and diesel
engines and based on the new small Jaguar floorpan. To be the most econonical Land Rover ever (yeh yeh ,
we've heard that before, hopefully this one won't be a huge flog like the Evoque's economy figures are and
might even relate to something we the people who don't get to drive day in day out in a lab might get on the
open road!) Autocar predicts pricing between £41k and £55k.

It'll be interesting to see how the model range evolves. The Jaguar X760 (3 series competitor) due in 2015 and X761 (SUV) due in 2016 along with the Evoque XL will all be aluminium, whereas the new (revised) Freelander to be rebadged Discovery will arrive in 2015 and be based on the existing Freelander 2/Evoque steel platform. Assuming Land Rover want at least 4 or 5 years out of the revised Freelander/Discovery that takes them through to 2020 by which time the Evoque will be 9 years old (same age as the Freelander will be when it's refreshed).
Now Halewood restarted production as a Jaguar plant in 2001 building the Jaguar X Type and Freelander 2 was added in 2006 with the then new Freelander 2 was launched with both the X Type and Freelander 2 being built on the same production line in the same way as Evoque and Freelander 2 are built today. So maybe we could expect an aluminium based Evoque and Freelander/Discovery around 2020 by which time the plant on the production line will be 19 years old and ready to be replaced by new plant capable of building aluminium based cars.

(15-10-2013 04:37pm)MrNoo Wrote:  It'll be interesting to see how the model range evolves. The Jaguar X760 (3 series competitor) due in 2015 and X761 (SUV) due in 2016 along with the Evoque XL will all be aluminium, whereas the new (revised) Freelander to be rebadged Discovery will arrive in 2015 and be based on the existing Freelander 2/Evoque steel platform. Assuming Land Rover want at least 4 or 5 years out of the revised Freelander/Discovery that takes them through to 2020 by which time the Evoque will be 9 years old (same age as the Freelander will be when it's refreshed).
Now Halewood restarted production as a Jaguar plant in 2001 building the Jaguar X Type and Freelander 2 was added in 2006 with the then new Freelander 2 was launched with both the X Type and Freelander 2 being built on the same production line in the same way as Evoque and Freelander 2 are built today. So maybe we could expect an aluminium based Evoque and Freelander/Discovery around 2020 by which time the plant on the production line will be 19 years old and ready to be replaced by new plant capable of building aluminium based cars.

I'm sure Tim has a deposit down already for 2020

2020, thats after retirement - I'll be using my bus pass by then and won't need a car!

There are some interesting quotes in the US Automotive News this week.
http://www.autonews.com/article/20131104...z2jiM645o3

Julian Thomson (Jaguars head of advanced design) has said that the JLR lightweight aluminium architecture could have between 20 and 30 vehicles based on it. Also in this article it says that this architecture will be used for all JLR vehicles except large Land Rover SUVs and Jaguar sports cars and that it cost $2.4 billion to develop.
We already know the Jaguar X760 and X761 along with Evoque XL will be based on this platform and this article suggests the Jaguar XF replacement (saloon and estate) will also be on this platform, so that's 5 vehicles. Assuming both Freelander and Evoque eventually utilise this platform taking the total to 7 vehicles what are the other 13+ vehicles going to be if it excludes large SUVs and sports cars?

Phil Popham (Group Sales Director) says JLR won't become a volume manufacturer and by that he means more than 1 million units per year. Meanwhile Lindsay Duffield (Jaguar Land Rover's chief executive in Canada) has said they have a target of 750,000 vehicles by 2020 with a long term target of 1 million. JLR sold 357,773 vehicles in 2012.