RR EVOQUE · SCALA · DS 3 · PISTA SPIDER · XE
The Evoque invented the trendy SUV. Now it’s back to take on rivals that were inspired by the original
Evoque vs X2 vs Macan in a battle of the handbags, the RS Megane Trophy leaves us lukewarm and Skoda keeps the Scala sensible
The first Evoque needed explaining, all right. A sport utility vehicle deprived of the utility… what was that all about? Well, it turned out that the world adores this mysterious idea. And so it came to pass that over the course of a single eight-year generation the Evoque went from the car that nobody understood to the car that needs no introduction.
As the car industry loves to do with a successful format, the Evoque has been boxed into a stereotype and made a ‘sector’.
BMW made the X2 as a direct rival, so we brought one along. Lexus has its new UX. Audi is on course for its own rival, a lowroof Q3 counterpart called the Q4 (not to be confused with the all-electric Q4 e-Tron which it’s also launching in a couple of years). Mercedes will shortly replace its GLA too.
Our third car here might at first be a surprise. The Porsche Macan is bigger, and longitudinally engined so it can be amped up to take a whole lot more power than the other two. In the past we’ve compared it with the Jaguar F-Pace. As you’ll know because you have a PhD in automotive platforms, Range Rover’s mirror of the F-Pace is a Velar, not an Evoque. But never mind the engineering, because sure as eggs is eggs, the buyers don’t mind the engineering.
All three cars cost roughly the same in the outfits presented here, so they’re rivals, and there’s an end to the matter. At first blush the Evoque seems avariciously priced, but it’s actually no more than the previous generation, and that found lots of buyers. The base-model Macan looks well-equipped, and let’s not forget it’s a Porsche, folks.
“THE EVOQUE WON’T FIT MUCH OF A HAUL FROM BICESTER VILLAGE”
Engines also throw up a slight anomaly. Until the BMW arrives as X2 M35i, there’s no quick one in the line-up, so we’re using a 190bhp diesel. But Porsche says diesel is history and so the basic Macan has a petrol, of two litres and 245bhp. The Range Rover is also a 2.0-litre petrol, here in 300bhp tune. If you pay company car tax, the costs will diverge pretty wildly on account of the CO2 difference: almost 190g/km with the petrols and a dramatically lower 124g/km for the diesel. And the consumption difference will bite if you buy your own fuel. The petrols are quieter and more fun to use, yes, but in objective terms they represent a whole bunch of expense just to save one scant second on the 0–62mph sprint.
The Evoque doesn’t feel like 300bhp anyway. That’ll be the effect of its heffalump mass – it’s all but two tonnes, which is an unflattering bit of spec when they say it’s an all-new car. Still, its mild hybrid system means economy isn’t too shocking, and it also helps shorten turbo lag. This is quite a pleasant engine installation, smooth at low revs, zingy high up and only a bit grumbly in the middle. The transmission’s nine speeds feel like too many and it’s not always decisive in choosing between them. But that ’box does have one advantage: a superlow first that’s useful off-road.
The Macan has a quick-witted seven-speed DCT. This, together with slightly less weight, plus some other magic not explained by the spec sheets, makes it overdeliver on its quoted power. It actually feels notably quicker than the Evoque, even if its engine doesn’t hit the big revs as willingly as the Evoque’s does.
Meanwhile, the BMW’s diesel is less of a handicap than you’d think. Versus the Evoque it’s lighter by four grown men, which does it a world of good. It’s a notably quiet and freerevving engine, given the oily stuff it burns, and, as always with the Bavarians, the automatic gearbox is on-point. But when you’re aiming at A-road overtakes, the petrol cars definitely have the legs of it.
Into some corners now. The Evoque’s steering is light but has a damped, almost viscous quality to it. So does the whole car. It changes direction when you’ve deliberately asked, and not before. It’s not without feel, but basically trucks around a bend without influence of throttle inputs. It’s tidy, thanks to progressive build-up of roll, and it’s supple enough not to be bothered by bumps on the way around. The ride seems a little firm for a Land Rover product, but then you drive the Porsche or BMW and forgive it. In town it’s compliant, and on the motorway it stays nicely supple and doesn’t kick up much tyre noise.
The Macan has an awesome reputation as a sporty SUV. Hoon the Turbo on a smooth surface and sure it is. But with less power to deploy and on a real British road, it stumbles. There’s a wooden clunkiness to its ride, even in this optionally air-suspended sample. And it rocks you side-to-side on the straights because the anti-roll characteristic is forced. Sure, tyre grip and steering precision and cornering balance are superb. But it’s humourless, lacking the real-world fluency and communication to live up to its rep.
The X2 tries not to be a crossover at all. But then as your doctoral thesis notes, it shares a platform with the bigger Minis. You sit low, and the steering’s very quick off-centre so it jabs into bends, but once into the curve it has almost as much accuracy as the Porsche. Because you sit closer to the ground, you feel less of the lateral rocking, and so the anti-roll bars have been set up softer without harm to agility. The ride’s firm and a little nuggety but its biggest chassis flaw is the tyre noise. At motorway speed you find yourself fiddling with the stereo volume every time you hit a new section of asphalt or concrete.
In towns, the BMW and Evoque have compactness on their side. The Porsche feels its bulk when snaking down narrow streets, but the upside is you feel like you’ve room to stretch when sitting in its front seats. The Evoque is snug, though not actually cramped. As for their back seats, grown-ups do fit in the X2 and Evoque. The Porsche is a bit bigger back there but not to the extent its longer wheelbase predicts, because its longitudinal engine swallows space. Where the Macan really scores is the boot, thanks to that long overhang. The BMW is shorter but its rucksack isn’t at all bad because it’s deep. The bob-tail Evoque won’t fit much of a haul from Bicester Village.
But you never see families aboard these things. Any talk about their cabins is really a discussion about the look and feel, and the amenities. All these three adhere zealously to the specifics of their brands. They’re like hotel chains or rolled-out restaurant franchises. If you’ve ever been to their other branches, you’ll know perfectly well whether you’re going to like them before you cross the threshold.
So the Porsche cabin is all a bit 911-ish, but rendered more upright and chunky for the SUV mission. The furniture is solid and serious. The instruments can call up more powertrain info than a dynamometer printout. The central screen is powered by a superfast processor, and it too has enough configuration options to keep a Swabian software engineer happily diverted for days. But because it’s a Porsche, many of the performance options have direct-access control buttons, laid out down the centre console alongside identical climate switchgear in a
“THEY’RE LIKE HOTEL CHAINS OR ROLLED-OUT RESTAURANT FRANCHISES”
guitar-fret style. Changing the damper settings in a hurry is like trying to play ‘All Along the Watchtower’. The Hendrix version. Not that it matters; the defaults are best.
The Evoque’s cabin takes Range Rover themes of simplified masses and lots of soft natural materials, available (but not shown here) in several interesting colours. Onto this minimalist backdrop the Evoque fixes a stack of display screens. Mostly they work efficiently and look good. The annoyingly erratic touch controls on the steering wheel are the exception.
The BMW is best ergonomically: clear round dials, well-arranged switches and the still-unmatched iDrive controller. But it’s all set into a dash that looks generically ordinary compared with the others, and the already limp wow factor is further eroded by the fact it’s just the same as one of their MPVs.
On the outside, mind, the BMW designers have made more effort to be distinctive. Glance at it in isolation and you might mistake it for an X1, but the next X1 you see after that will strike you as ill-proportioned and chubby. Wasn’t the idea of a coupe to burnish the brand as a whole, not to undermine the mainstream cars? In fact the X2 is cleverly packaged: it loses little practicality to the X1. That makes a more basic X2 a good buy, but at the price level of this 6 test it’s just a bit ordinary.
The Macan meanwhile resembles a leaner, fitter Cayenne. It’ll be interesting to see how that plays when the Cayenne Coupe comes along. The Evoque looks special. It’s so wellconsidered, so shorn of anything random, and it’s well enough proportioned that it doesn’t need embellishing trickery to disguise things (unlike the big RR which has fake vents on the
door to dissemble the side’s length).
It’s not just the Evoque’s silhouette that enables it to play at this price. The whole set-up is appropriate for its purpose. The Macan is a satisfying piece of precision engineering and well-equipped enough to justify the price, and it’ll carry more stuff. But in search of speed in what are, in all honesty, pretty abstract circumstances, Porsche has sacrificed too much of the warm embrace you want from a crossover. The Evoque is surprisingly more satisfying on a bumpy, slippery B-road, and considerably more refined for the towns and motorways where it’ll spend most of its time. That’s why it wins.
“IN TOWN, THE BMW AND EVOQUE HAVE COMPACTNESS ON THEIR SIDE”