For a vehicle that prides itself with a go-anywhere-and-get-your-tires-dirty, our long-term 2014 Land Rover Range Rover Evoque holds quite a number of SUV comfort cards. Not all, but many.
High is the new comfortable
From deep inside the city to dark inside the forests, folks are buying SUVs. Why? More than room to haul stuff (or people and their stuff), a lot of urban dwellers simply enjoy riding high and looking over the traffic. The high-riding Range Rover Evoque gives them a pretty good view of the big picture, which makes it a little easier to feel comfortable in a sea of traffic. True, that comforting view tends to diminish as the Evoque’s tapered windows narrow rearward in the spirit of the SUV’s design, but there’s some comfort to the cool factor in the Land Rover‘s exterior design.
The $3,000 "Pure Plus" option package added some real extra comfort to our long-term in the form of power-adjustable, leather-covered seats for the driver and front passenger. Electric lumbar adjustment is included in the Pure Plus package, as are good stuff like two rows of panoramic glass roof, a power tailgate, 19-inch aluminum-alloy wheels, front fog lights, headlight washers, and Bob’s your comfortable uncle.
While headroom seems to go on forever in our Indus Silver Evoque, legroom in the SUV’s second row is at a premium. This isn’t necessarily the end of the world, however, unless you’ve got somebody tall in the family — then it’s a deal breaker.
Also: Kelley Blue Book Best Buy Awards of 2015
Going the distance
Unless you drive on glass-flat asphalt, you’re going to have a little company from road and engine sounds in the Evoque. It’s a minor intrusion with which we find easy to live. What’s harder to get used to is the automatic stop/start feature which shuts off the engine at stoplights and drops a pall of silence over the cabin, only to interrupt that silence again when the engine abruptly comes back to life again as you lift your foot off the brake pedal.
With design and rugged-road capability as its 1-2 punch, we appreciate quality of the Evoque’s on-road ride as well. One editor, after an 8-hour solo drive up through the foothills of California’s Sierra Nevada Mountains, gave our long-term Land Rover SUV thumbs up for its on-road manners and its ability to ignore pavement imperfections. "That snakey 2-lane road up through the Owens Valley had every right to leave me all wrestled out," he concluded, "but the Evoque kept the worst of it at bay."
