Range Rover Evoque 5dr (2011): the full story

Land Rover has today issued the full spec on the new Range Rover Evoque five-door. As you can expect, not much is different from the three-door revealed this summer, but there are some interesting asides all the same.

The two bodystyles were planned in from day one. Land Rover calls the three-door Evoque a coupe aimed at singletons or young couples; the five-door is pitched at young families with one or two children.

The windscreen is exactly the same angle as the three-door’s, but is stretched by 62mm – allowing the roof to be mounted higher up. It’s still raked, but doesn’t fall away as steeply as the three-door Evoque’s roofline.

‘Headroom for those in the front row is 30mm better than the Evoque coupe,’ Land Rover’s engineering chief Murray Dietsch tells CAR. ‘Passengers in the rear get 40mm more headroom.’

Interestingly, the roof pressing is identical on both models; it just sits higher up on the five-door and is mounted at a different angle. But the five-door has more rear shoulder room too, as there is less tumblehome. Everyman’s translation: that means the side windows are less steeply angled in.

Not really. The platform is identical, so the engineering story is the same: front-wheel drive will be available for the first time, but many Evoques will be specced with 4wd. The five-door comes with three rear seats, as opposed to the coupe’s 2+2 seating layout (a three-seat bench can be ordered on the 3dr, however).

Land Rover expects the five-door to take the lion’s share of sales, gobbling up around two-thirds of production. Both bodystyles will be built at Halewood.

Expect the five-door to be cheaper than the ‘coupe’ Evoque, since it will have a less extravagant specification as standard. Both bodystyles go on sale simultaneously with first production slated for summer 2011.

By Tim Pollard