2015 Range Rover Evoque review, test drive

What is it like to drive?

Around the bends, in the rough stuff and out on the highway, the nine-speed Evoque feels just as the older Evoque did. That is to say it is tight in body movements, as capable as any range Rover should be (helped by the Terrain Response system that primes the engine, gearbox, brakes and four-wheel drive system for different scenarios) and refined and long legged for extended-distance touring. Ride quality in general is good too with the tyres and suspension ably soaking up most of what our roads throw at them.

However, the in-town driving experience could be better. The gearbox is programmed to upshift as you lift off the throttle. Because of this, in slow-moving traffic the gearbox never settles on a ratio for long. As a result of the constant shuffling between the gears, power delivery is not particularly smooth.
At lower speeds, gearshifts aren’t as imperceptible as ZF’s own eight-speed unit. The way to work around this is to operate the paddles in manual mode or have the gearbox run in S, which limits unnecessary upshifts. However, once on the move at faster speeds, the gearbox gets into its rhythm. Drive with a light enough foot and the electronics will have the gearbox shift to ninth at about 95kph. Press down and the gearbox will go down as many as five ratios, with no delay to get the car into the heart of the engine’s powerband. The engine delivers power in a nice, linear manner and manages to sound quite refined even at its redline. Still, don’t expect the nine-speed Evoque to outdo the older one by a great margin — performance figures are pretty similar.