Range Rover Evoque Convertible 2016 review

Does the world need a soft-top SUV? The world has gone SUV-mad but are we crazy enough to embrace a soft-top soft-roader?

We’re poised to find out. The new Range Rover Evoque convertible could be a watershed moment in the SUV march towards global domination.

In the past it was pretty easy to define the genre — a tall, wagon-like body with more ground clearance than a regular hatchback or sedan, with heaps of room in the back for people and cargo.

Then BMW came up with the swoopy X6 coupe, a vehicle that was more about sports than utility.

Land Rover challenges convention once more with a convertible version of the Range Rover Evoque that arrives in Australian showrooms in October.

Wriggling up a snow-covered track that would better suit someone skiing in the opposite direction, we can’t help but be impressed with Land Rover’s ability to build vehicles that are as functional as they are fashionable.

Faced with a series of extreme off-road obstacles, the baby Range Rover Evoque is mighty impressive, especially considering its main target market is sun-loving city-types. The brand’s core values remain intact.

Land Rover is well aware that few Evoques see more off-road duty than scaling the kerb while attempting to park at swanky ski villages.

That’s probably why we are at the prestigious Courchevel resort in France for our first taste of this rugged ragtop.

Billed as the world’s first luxury compact SUV convertible, the drop-top inevitably involves some packaging compromises, including two rear seats instead of three, though designers tried to minimise these.

Engineering manager Michelle O’Connor says the team tried to maintain the interior packaging and refinement of the fixed-roof Evoque Coupe.

Similar in size to a BMW 2 Series or Audi A3, the Evoque still packs the rear-seat legroom of the three-door and the headroom of the five-door counterpart and retains two ISOFIX child seat mounts.

The compact fabric roof endows a liveable rear seat for average-height adults, with less sidewards skewing than you’ll find in the back of a 2 Series convertible.

The coupe’s swooping roofline has been preserved with the soft-top in place. It will lower via a toggle switch in 18 seconds at up to 50km/h. Raising takes three seconds longer.

At 251L, the convertible’s cargo space is less than half the storage in its three-door roofed version (550L) but the real-world difference is minor — the latter figure is calculated from the roof lining down. Boot depth is unchanged and an optional ski-port compensates in part for the lack of a split-folding rear seat.

Billed as the world’s first luxury compact SUV convertible, the drop-top involves some packaging compromises

Hardtop Evoques scored only a four-star ANCAP rating in 2011. The convertible adds seat-mounted side and head-protecting airbags to compensate for the folding roof, while twin rollover bars also pop up behind the rear headrests within 90 milliseconds if an impending crash is detected.

Land Rover announced in November that the convertible is coming to Australia in SE Dynamic and HSE Dynamic trim, each with the coupe’s diesel and petrol options.

Kicking off at $84,835 for the SE Dynamic Td4 180, the convertible adds more than $10,000 to the base price of the Coupe but arrives with less kit than the hardtop’s base trim.

The $92,015 HSE Dynamic Si4 convertible also adds more than $10K to the top end of the range but at least matches the coupe’s trim level.

On the road

As well as the snowy obstacle course, our Evoque Convertible drive included several hundred kilometres of highway, rural and mountain roads of various surface quality.

Spending most of our time with the top down but windows up, we used the optional rear-seat windbreak to keep warm despite the 7 degrees ambient temperature — and could even chat at up to 150km/h.

The interior is aging very well, with beautiful shapes and excellent quality materials everywhere you touch. There are still no bottleholders in the front doors, leaving just the cupholders in the centre console and small cubbies for each rear passenger.

With the roof up, outward vision is much better than anticipated from such a design-focused shape and the fabric is as smooth on the inside as it is on the exterior.

Road noise isn’t quite as well suppressed as we recollect of the fixed-roof Evoques but this could be due to the chunky winter tyres on the test examples.

Extra strengthening and roof mechanisms add 280kg over equivalent Coupe models and this can be felt when accelerating.

Both engines still do well enough but the extra weight also adds 0.6L/100km and 0.8L to the combined fuel figures for the diesel and petrol respectively.

Much vaunted, the Ingenium diesel is quieter than the older petrol engine a lot of the time, delivering its best with less fuss (and at lower revs) than the petrol.

The weight is a lot less obvious when tossing the Convertible around corners, thanks to its stiffer springs and revised damping. It definitely doesn’t feel like a two-tonne SUV in the bends. The ride is still firm but remains comfortable on rural roads, even in the HSE Dynamic shod with 20-inch wheels.