Petrol or Diesel

Yep it rears it's head again - I might be having to change my Evoque from a Coupe to a 5 door due to my elderly father no longer being allowed to drive and my mother not liking driving any distance so I will chauffeur them as and when required. Getting in and out of the rear of the coupe isn't impossible for either of them but it is not a nice experience, especially for my mother who had both hip joints replaced not so long ago. I wondered if any of the Si4 owners might like to comment about their feelings about long term ownership of the 2.0ltr engine compared to the SD4. I have had a trest drive of the Si4 and think the SD4 is more refined, but that was only a very short test drive with Spiderman at the wheel

Tim, the extra doors will make life a breeze for when you need to use them for anything, and will be a joy for chauffeuring your parents too. Lets not forget that the opening doors also come with opening windows, of which the coupe does not.
The 5 door still has that radical look, and in my eyes, actually holds it's own when it comes to proportion and elegance.
Engine wise, after test driving both the Si4 v SD4 back to back, i found that the main differences was that the SD4 was more relaxing to drive,yet at the same time,with a ton of torque in real world conditions,seemed just as fast.

Shame you have to change, to me the 5 door is a no brainer, cheaper, more practical and almost as good looking. I even prefer the less "squat" stance at the rear.

Tim - I drove the SD4 as a loan car while my Si4 was at the dealers - I was impressed with the torque and the manual gearbox so have a point (albeit only a few hours actual driving) of comparison. I've now got about 2300 miles on my car and the engine and gearbox feel to be loosening up nicely - it's smooth and unless you go for very aggressive kickdown then this doesn't really change and the engine noise stays in the background. I don't tend to welly it away from the lights and find gentle application of throttle gives a pleasant surge of acceleration and you quickly get up to the legal limits both in town and getting onto motorways. The cruise experience on motorways is quiet and comfortable and compares very well with the Audi and BMWs I had before. The front end handling I felt was even sharper on the petrol, possibly due to the magneride and the lighter engine (compared to an SD4 without magneride).

I've said elsewhere on here - my decision to go for the petrol was partly about wanting the (slightly) more powerful car (I'm not sure on a day to day basis you'd notice a huge difference though), partly because I wanted an auto again and partly because I do about 8k miles a year and therefore get no meaningful economic / environmental benefit from a diesel. As a side comment a family member recently had real issues with a Vauxhall diesel's DPF based on doing too few miles / the 'wrong' type of driving (!) so it's something I'm conscious of as well, albeit it wasn't a big factor for me.

In short I'm enjoying my car and if I were in your position I wouldn't hesitate to choose the petrol - but if you care about running costs I think it comes down to your annual mileage... I know Spiderman had a petrol on order for his wife - not sure he's still on the forum much but he might give you a view via pm. Hope that's some help.

When I ordered the SD4 I wasn't sure at the time whether or not to change it for the Si4 but then I left it too late to change anyway. I'm not that worried about running costs - I've owned several FFRR's RRS's and a TVR so know what real running costs and depreciation are! My only concern with the Si4 was that I do the Central Scotland / London haul several times a year and in all my previous cars I never needed to stop enroute to refuel, RRE has a faily small tank and to have to stop twice on a trip to London and refuel at motorway prices would not be on.
Next rpoblem is another Dynamic Lux Plus or a Prestige with all the trimmings?

If the range is your only concern then I think you have to choose the diesel...

Remember the petrol has a larger tank than the diesel though (70L vs 60L) which ought to offset things a bit. If they were to both achieve their quoted extra urban mpg then the diesel would only end up with 25 extra miles range (655 vs 630). Obviously the actual mpg they are returning seems to be rather short of the quoted amounts, but from what I've been able to tell the diesel seems to come off worse than the petrol in relation to the quoted mpg, so you may even find the petrol has the same or better range.

Can't see the point of the Si4 it's not that much faster than the SD4 and 20ish mpg for such a slow car pretending to be a fast one is nonsense.

I was getting 22mpg out of a supercar busting 420bhp V8 Audi RS4 that hit 4.9s 0-60, 170mph and had more space than an Evoque. I love the Evoque design but expected far more from the 'hot' version - the Si4 is more a Korma and not even Madras in my book!

I had long test drives in a couple of Si4s and didn't even see 20mpg, the engine sounded strained and it wasn't even that quick. The brakes are woeful and the steering too light with no feel.

So when a local dealer had both Si4 and SD4 Dynamic Lux's available I snapped up the SD4 Auto as it will have far better residuals when I trade it in for a true hot Evoque or get fed up waiting and get something else if LR take too long sort a decent performance engine, upgrade the brakes and put some more feel back in the steering. Fallback is a Porsche Cajun which looks a promising replacement too

(08-01-2012 05:23am)XFullFatTim Wrote:  Yep it rears it's head again - I might be having to change my Evoque from a Coupe to a 5 door due to my elderly father no longer being allowed to drive and my mother not liking driving any distance so I will chauffeur them as and when required. Getting in and out of the rear of the coupe isn't impossible for either of them but it is not a nice experience, especially for my mother who had both hip joints replaced not so long ago. I wondered if any of the Si4 owners might like to comment about their feelings about long term ownership of the 2.0ltr engine compared to the SD4. I have had a trest drive of the Si4 and think the SD4 is more refined, but that was only a very short test drive with Spiderman at the wheel

Hi Tim. Bet you already know the answer. Your driving style has got diesel written all over it. Personally I could be tempted by a petrol but only if they make it a good deal more potent than the present one and they dont bring out a correspondingly powerful diesel.

I really like my Si4 - sure, it ain't no super hot sports car, my remapped 335i and Z4M annihilated it to 62mph but driven hard neither matched the urban 23/24 mpg I'm getting from my Evoque driven fairly spiritedly.

The aforementioned sports cars were lighter...but that's because they had no 4x4 gubbins...the Si4 is sporty for an SUV and can go off-road if needs be something my sports cars could never do!

SD4? Lovely, encourages a more sedate driving style and can overtake with gusto when required...I wanted the petrol power delivery this time around though and this car delivers!