Range Rover Evoque 5 Door: Official

The Range Rover Evoque 5-Door gets an official reveal

As is the way with the Interweb, stuff leaks out in to the big wide world. Something Land Rover found at the Paris Motor Show this year when they brought along a Range Rover Evoque 5 door to show off on the quiet. They had no intention of showing it at Paris – it was supposed to be, and still will be, the Land Rover star for the Los Angeles Show this month. But the Evoque 5 door got papped and we ran the story. As did many others.

But Land Rover were pragmatic, bit the bullet and issued a single photo of the 5 door Evoque. Which was a sensible thing to do as it was already out there. And lets face it, it’s not the end of the world and they got an extra bite at the publicity cherry.

But with the Los Angeles Show looming we now get all the blurb in the 5 door Evoque press release and a decent set of photos (in the gallery below). So what’s the fuss? It’s just an extra couple of doors?

Actually, it’s a bit more than that. Think of the 3 door Evoque as the style statement and the 5 door Evoque as the practical option. Because the 5 door is quite different, although visually it looks remarkably close to its form-focused sibling.

The roof of the 5 door Evoque is set 30mm higher than in the 3 door and the windscreen extends a further 60mm. The roof sits flatter than in the 3 door – where it slopes down more at the back – which means you’ll get an extra 30mm headroom in the front and 40mm in the back (that’s over an inch and a half more headroom in the back in real money) and the lack of tapering at the sides in the 5 door means an extra 50mm shoulder room in the 5 door.

As far as the oily bits are concerned it seems certain that the 5 door Evoque will get the same options as the 3 door, namely two versions of the ubiquitous 2.2 litre diesel – 148bhp and 187bhp – and Land Rover’s version of Ford’s EcoBoost 2.0 litre with 237bhp.

And you can expect the Evoque – we’re assuming the 3 door as well as the 5 door – to perform very well on road with the announcement that Land Rover are fitting Adaptive Dynamics with MagneRide to the Evoque, which should make it very car-like on road but with the usual exemplary off-road behaviour thanks to Terrain Response.

The 5 door Evoque officially debuts later this month in Los Angeles and will launch Summer 2011.

(17 photos – click any thumbnail for full gallery)

By Cars UK