Hotter Evoque ruled out – for now
Land Rover pours cold water on a high-performance Rangie EvoqueIt seems there isn't too much love at Land Rover for a high-performance version of the Range Rover Evoque.
In town for the Frankfurt motor show this week, motoring.com.au spoke with both Murray Dietsch and John Edwards at Land Rover, concerning the prospect of the manufacturer fielding a hard-charging off-roader based on the Evoque.
"Is there enough of a market out there?" Dietsch asked rhetorically. "There's probably a lot of people in the business who would like to do a number of different Evoque derivatives – and probably the bigger vehicles as well."
Dietsch, Director of Programmes at Land Rover, admits to liking the idea of developing a smoking-hot Evoque, but says that funding the development project would be a hurdle.
"It's one of those things that we all kind of compete for – the investment dollar – and it's not just within the Land Rover/Range Rover business, it's on the Jaguar side as well.
"There is a lot of aspiration to do things like that," he adds.
Such a vehicle would skew target buyers back more to men, but Dietsch argues that Evoque ownership is less a girls' club than it once was.
"We've had some success in the past building some demonstrators – to capture people's hearts and minds. So it's quite probable something like that could be in that realm. The interesting thing [is] we've seen a bit of a mix change in the Evoque over the last two years.
"It's become much more mainstream for us now, whereas it started out being what we thought might have been a high proportion of women. Eighty per cent of all purchases are influenced by women anyway, but it is something we would take a look at.
"If we can make it work, I think we'll want to do it."
Land Rover's Global Brand Director, John Edwards, echoed Dietsch's sentiments that the funding for a sportier Evoque would have to come from somewhere.
"There's always the opportunity to play with things like that, but... [when you] talk openly about 2.75 billion pounds of investment, we're focusing on our core range at the moment, and we've got no plans to do any extreme sports [models]," he said.
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