2019 Range Rover Evoque vs 2020

What's the difference?

The second-generation Range Rover Evoque is a lot of things. It’s stunning to look at, better to drive, more practical, and more luxurious than ever before.

While it’s also hugely expensive and has lost some of the charm that came with its once-small visage, it achieves something far more important for the Evoque name, and that’s keeping it relevant in an increasingly congested luxury space.

Also check out Andrew Chesterton's thoughts from the Evoque's international launch.

Note: CarsGuide attended this event as a guest of the manufacturer, with travel and meals provided.

The D180 might be more expensive than the other cars it's compared to. You can thank Land Rover's weird habit of straddling sizes for that. But it does come with a fair bit of carefully chosen gear. It's mildly annoying you need to tick a few boxes to finish the job (at least the packages aren't too stupidly priced), but I guess you know what you're getting yourself into.

The Evoque is a gorgeous car and one that will keep you feeling good about your purchase every time you look at it. Even with the D180 S, you're getting plenty of the good things the Evoque has to offer. It's also a far more substantial car than any of its German rivals with a far greater breadth of capability.

Put simply – the Evoque has returned to put competitors back where they belong. It is truly stunning for an SUV. To my eyes, at least, it has dethroned the Volvo XC40 as the most attractive small SUV on the market.

Sure, it’s more Victoria Beckham than Bear Grylls, but the Range Rover brand has crept beyond upmarket from its hose-out interior roots – and the Evoque owns it.

Land Rover has managed to morph the seamless, slick lines of the Velar onto the Evoque's petite and chunky frame. Design touches like LED headlights (now standard), contrast bodypanels and flush doorhandles add to this car’s stunning visage as you get closer.

Still, it’s undeniably an Evoque and has held onto design pillars like the ‘high beltline’ that rides from the headlamps to the tail-lights and descending roofline.

Inside, the Evoque has also continued to push upmarket with leather-trimmed surfaces from the base S up. It still has the signature chunky door inserts with recessed handles and window/mirror controls and has lovely seats no matter the grade with a premium-feel raised centre console stack.

It’s also in the centre where the Evoque has gained the elegant ‘Touch Pro Duo’ set-up from its larger sibling the Velar, totally de-cluttering the space.

Smart design touches are abound with well-textured and hidden storage areas throughout.

It all looks incredible, but there are a few downsides worth noting. The Evoque now has the huge steering wheel from the rest of the Range Rover range, making the helm feel more cumbersome than it was in its predecessor, and the abundance of gloss surfaces results in a potentially glare-heavy and difficult to keep clean cabin.

Don’t like the cars in the pictures? No problems, Land Rover offers no less than 17 different interior trim packages with five different textured highlights and numerous headlinings and wheel trims for pretty much any taste.

The Evoque is extremely pretty and it's difficult to find a person who disagrees with me. Even other designers are a bit jealous of what Gerry McGovern and his team can get done, this time without the interfering publicity of a Spice Girl.

I think this car is much closer to the design of the LRX Concept that kicked off the whole Evoque phenomenon (and, if you're interested, kick-started the career of Rob Melville, now head of design at McLaren).

The flush surfaces are quite lovely and probably work slightly better here than on the Velar. It just seems to suit this size a bit more. My only complaint is there isn't a three-door version anymore.

It's at its best on big wheels, however. The standard 17s are completely lost in the flared wheelarches, so spend some money on bigger hoops.

The cabin is another triumph. A mix of traditional Range Rover chunkiness and sleek lines, it's a big jump over the old car.

With the Touch Pro Duo it's techy-looking and everything works with everything else as far as graphics go. A consistent look and feel is something you don't notice, but when it isn't done right, it's jarring.

The Evoque is on a heavily updated platform with its very bones having been altered to future-proof it for hybrid drivetrains.

This has resulted in a 20mm increase to its wheelbase, which is reflected directly into its now-gigantic cabin.

Aside from the invasively large steering wheel, the driver is greeted with an airy and spacious cabin with plenty of room for elbows across the thick centre console and chiseled out door cards.

Almost every surface greets you with a soft material, although the window line is quite high, making resting your arm there impractical.

There are storage spaces everywhere. Bottle holders in the doors, cupholders in the centre console, a massive top-box with a split opening and power sources within, a decently-sized glove box and a huge trench hidden underneath the second-screen.

The designers have had the foresight to put lovely textures on the base of storage surfaces to prevent items like phones, wallets and even pens from finding their way onto the floor.

Rear passengers are greeted with no shortage of legroom, dual rear air-vents, pockets on the back of the front seats and trenches in the doors.

Seat trim and comfort are easily as good as the front seats, and despite the declining roofline, headroom is plentiful for someone my size (I’m 182cm tall).

An odd annoyance I noted was the lack of handles above the doors. Almost every car has these. Not sure why this one doesn’t.

Don’t be deceived by the Evoque’s squashed rear window. I found on my test drive its surprisingly easy to see out of it, and then, there’s the boot.

The boot is truly gigantic, the Evoque’s new platform has made it 20cm wider than it was before, but it’s the volume that’s staggering. At 591 litres with the rear seats up it easily pulls punches with SUVs a size up.

There’s also an elastic belt and netted area for securing small objects. There are a few small catches to this voluminous space, and that’s that the rear seats don’t fold fully flat, making for a smaller total space and there’s only a space-saver spare wheel on offer under the boot floor.

The new Evoque feels substantially bigger than the old one. Passenger space is more generous, partly due to a longer wheelbase, so four adults will fit comfortably. A fifth, not so much, but few cars manage that and certainly not in this segment.

The boot is a massive 591 litres, which is unheard of in the compact SUV segment and difficult to find in the next size up, too. The load space is pretty good, with over a metre between the wheelarches, but when you fold the rear seats, they don't go completely flat, which might be a drama.

You get two cupholders front and rear and a good size centre console bin which hides the USB ports. If you plug it in, your phone kind of has to go on the tray under your elbow and, honestly, that's annoying. I really can't work out why it irritates me, but there you have it.

If you do want to take it off-road, the Evoque has 210mm of clearance, a wading depth of 600mm (I've driven one in a river), approach angle of 22.2-degrees, breakover of 20.7 and departure of 30.6. Not startlingly good, but there aren't many cars in this class that can do all that.

The Evoque range is still dizzyingly large, with four trim levels and six engines. My Evoque for the week was the base model S teamed with the second of the three diesels, the D180.

It might be a base model and is often compared to compact SUVs like the BMW X2 or Audi Q3 (it's not that compact), so the $64,640 base price looks a bit stiff.

There is a bit of Range Rover added on to the price, but it's also usefully bigger than its European rivals.

The base price includes 18-inch alloys, LED headlights with auto high beam, electric front seats, leather trim, dual-zone climate control, six-speaker stereo, sat nav, reversing camera, front and rear parking sensors, cruise control, power everything, wireless hotspot and a space saver spare.

It also comes with a massive 10-inch central screen running JLR's 'InControl' software which is light years ahead of where it started.

Fronted by a nice tiled interface, you can connect a phone app to it to tell you all sorts of things about the car and it has Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. The sat nav is good-looking but still a bit dim.

If anyone buys an Evoque without any options, have they really bought an Evoque? 

Range Rover's local team certainly doesn't think so, with 20-inch wheels ($2120), 14-way heated front seats (also heated rear seats) for $1725, 'Drive Pack' (adaptive cruise, blind spot detection, high-speed AEB, $1340), 'Park Pack' (clear exit detection, rear cross traffic alert, park assist), keyless entry and start ($900), privacy glass ($690), digital dash ($690), 'Touch Pro Duo' (a second screen manages climate control and various functions, $600), 'Smart View' rear mirror ($515), powered tailgate ($480), around view cameras ($410), ambient lighting ($410), digital radio ($400) and paddle shifters ($270).

Some of this stuff really should be standard, like high-speed AEB, keyless entry and start and reverse cross-traffic alert, but there you are.

You can obviously get away with far fewer options, but the Touch Pro Duo, Drive and Park Packs are sensible buys for a family car and if a dealer doesn't throw in DAB for nothing, dob them in to the cops.

All of this took the price to $76,160. So that was going to make it difficult for me to judge whether this "entry level" Evoque was worth the money, but I'll give a it a lash.

As previously mentioned, the Evoque has almost too many engine options. There are three petrols and three diesels, ranging from so-so to perhaps overpowered in the case of the P300.

All the engine options are 2.0-litre turbocharged units in different states of tune, and all are mated to a nine-speed torque converter transmission, with all-wheel drive.

Starting with the diesel the entry-level engine offered on most grades is the D150 which offers 110kW/380Nm, you can then step up to the mid-spec D180 which ups those figures to 132kW/430Nm and then to the top-spec D240 which offers 177kW/500Nm.

On the petrol side, things kick off with the P200 at 147kW/320Nm, then there’s the P250 with 183kW/365Nm and, finally, the top-spec P300 which has a rather silly 221kW/400Nm.

The top two engine options also offer a mild hybrid 48V electrical system which is capable of cutting the engine under 17km/h and feeding power back into auxiliary systems, although it is not capable of running the car under its own power. The brand says the system allows for a six per cent reduction in fuel consumption.

To make things more complicated, a three-cylinder mild-hybrid and plug-in hybrid variants are expected to join the line-up some time in 2020.

The 2.0-litre Ingenium engine is exactly the same size as every engine offered in the Evoque. There are six of them, of course, because why not? The D180 is the second of three turbo-diesels, winding up for 132kW and a walloping 430Nm.

It's a Range Rover, so it has all-wheel drive with an electronic rear differential and a nine-speed automatic directing power to the wheels.

Range Rover reckons it accelerates from 0-100km/h in 9.3 seconds and says it's rated to tow 2000kg.

The chunky little beast weighs 1770kg and has a gross vehicle mass (GVM) rating of 2490kg.

The Evoque has reasonable official claimed/combined consumption figures across all its engine options. Diesel engines are more impressive consuming 5.1L/100km for the base D150, 6.8L/100km for the D180 and 6.3L/100km for the D240.

Petrols are not quite as good, with stated figures of 8.1L/100km for the P200 and P250 and 8.2L/100km for the P300.

Every new-generation Evoque has a 65-litre fuel tank.

Even though it's a diesel, the claimed fuel consumption number for such a chunky boy of 5.8L/100km looks a little optimistic. And it was, but just a little.

Our week with the car (during which it was gently driven because I managed to do something unspeakably painful to my back resulting in a genuine fear of even the tiniest bump or lurch) we got 7.4L/100km. Not bad at all.

This Evoque is better to drive in almost every way compared to its predecessor. It’s smoother, more confident in corners, more composed on rough terrain, and some combination of the new engines and re-calibration of the nine-speed auto has made most of the turbo-lag issues reported on its predecessor a thing of the past.

Unlike many SUVs, the Evoque doesn’t suffer from the feeling of impending understeer, and it’s surprisingly capable when trudging along unsealed roads and even off-road tracks.

Although there’s no mechanical control of a low-range gearbox, Land Rover’s computer-controlled Terrain Response 2 system might surprise you as to how capable it really is, especially on the top two engine variants with their enhanced torque vectoring abilities.

Diesel engines in particular are surprisingly quiet, and while it could be argued that the P300 petrol engine is overpowered for something this size, it was genuinely difficult to get the wheels to lose traction on tarmac.

One criticism I would level at this new Evoque is that in its quest to become the most practical small luxury machine on four wheels, it’s lost something along the way. It’s so big and heavy now it feels as though you’re just driving a cropped down Velar.

That’s all very luxurious, but I’ll miss the nimble, agile feeling that was a large part of what made the first Evoque so endearing.

Up until I drove the D180, I hadn't driven a diesel Evoque, even during the first-generation's lengthy run. The P300 is a belter of a car, but you certainly pay for the privilege.

I can't say I was expecting much in the way of driving enjoyment in the Evoque (which I did drive before injuring myself) but came away quite impressed.

Only two things genuinely annoyed me. The first was the too-light steering. While it's beautifully set up for driving around town and keeping effort to a minimum, it took a while to get used to.

The second thing, which is entirely selfish, is that the Evoque's diesel engine isn't as quick as some of its smaller rivals. But that's pretty much it.

Once you're moving, the slow feeling melts away, because a combination of a now much better nine-speed automatic and that huge torque figure means very swift and/or relaxed progress.

In the old days, the nine-speeder spent a fair amount of time looking for the right gear. It seems right at home in the turbo-diesel, ensuring it stays in that fat torque band.

It's a terrifically competent car to drive, too. Despite its off-road abilities (no, you can't get too carried away, but it'll do more than most), it has a lovely on-road feel. Not too soft, but with a nice flow in the ride and handling either in the city or out on the highway.

The Evoque arrives with six airbags, pedestrian airbag, ABS, stability and traction controls, AEB with pedestrian detection, rollover stability, hill descent control, forward collision warning, lane departure warning, lane keep assist, speed zone recognition and driver fatigue warning.

As mentioned earlier, you can add various safety features through the Drive Pack and Park Pack.

There are two ISOFIX anchors and three top-tether points.

The Range Rover Evoque scored the maximum five-star ANCAP stars in May, 2019.

Land Rover offers a three-year 100,000km warranty which is frustratingly short, though if you believe what BMW has to say on the matter, this won’t bother premium buyers.

Still, with Volkswagen now offering a five-year warranty, the pressure will hopefully mount on premium automakers to start offering a little more in this space.

Land Rover does offer 24 hour roadside assist for the length of the warranty.

The new Evoque has condition-dependent servicing, meaning the car’s on-board computer will notify you when it’s time to have it serviced. This will happen at least once every 12 months.

This car’s predecessor allowed you to add service packs of up to five years at the time of purchase, as well as an optional extended warranty. We’ll seek clarification and pricing on these and update this story when we have confirmation on both.

Annoyingly, Range Rovers is still stuck with a three-year/100,000km warranty, something I know dealers aren't too happy with.

Mercedes-Benz recently went to five years, so hopefully the rest of the luxury sector follows. In fact, maybe part of the welcome back to life post-Corona could be just such an announcement.

On the flip-side, the servicing regime is really good. Like BMW, it's condition-based and means you will likely only have to return to the dealer once per year.

If you want to pre-pay your servicing, you can do it for five years and it will cost you $1950, or just under $400 per year. Bargain.

A Mercedes GLA will cost you between $1950 and $2400 for just three years, and five years is a lot more at $3500. A BMW X2 or Audi Q3 will cost you roughly $1700 for five years.