After letting rivals run away with its ‘Rolls-Royce of SUVs’ crown – including Rolls-Royce itself – Land Rover, and specifically its Range Rover sub-brand, are fighting back. The pricier versions of the latest Range Rovers and Range Rover Sports are as fast, luxurious and expensive as the Aston Martin DBX, Lamborghini Urus and Bentley Bentayga.
But right down at the opposite end of the model range you can buy a brand new Range Rover that’s not fast, particularly luxurious or even that expensive. But what makes it really unusual is that it comes with a manual transmission.
The bottom-rung Evoque S D165, which isn’t available in America, but is still listed in the UK for £40,800 ($51,412), isn’t just the only car in the entire Land Rover and Range Rover portfolio to come with stick, it’s also the only one not to send power to all four wheels.
But with only 163 hp (165 PS) on hand from its 2.0-liter diesel motor, it probably manages just fine with front-wheel drive unless the weather gets really wintry. Zero to 60 mph (96 km/h) takes a leisurely 9.5 seconds, which is three tenths longer than the next model up, the £43,365 ($54,645) D165 Diesel Mild Hybrid. That makes the same power despite the presence of a starter generator, but sends it to all four wheels via an automatic transmission.
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Looking at renders of the two versions’ interiors on the configurator there’s almost no difference between them. You still get the same Pivo touchscreen and the cup holders are in the same place behind the shifter area. But while we love to see a manual shifter in any car, it looks odd to see one in a car from a brand that’s actively pushing itself as a top-drawer luxury manufacturer, almost as if someone has used AI to comp one into a photo to see what a manual Range Rover might look like.
It’s no secret that Land Rover has offered the Evoque before with both front-wheel drive and a three-pedal setup, at least in some countries, like the UK. But I thought that configuration had been dropped years ago, and was shocked to learn it was still alive and well after this model year’s facelift.
We’re waiting for Land Rover to get back to us with figures for exactly how many manuals it sells each year, but the numbers must be tiny. A look on the firm’s approved used car locator reveals only 10 Evoque manuals for sale, none of which were made more recently than 2021.
And if you want a new one, the configurator advises that you face a wait of between six and nine months, versus three to six months for any other Evoque. So why does Land Rover even bother listing it in the UK when it’s not available in France or Germany (it is offered in Italy and Spain)? We can think of a couple of reasons and none of them is that there’s a huge demand from customers for Evoques with a manual shifter.
On the one hand it allows Land Rover to advertise an enticingly lower price point, showing potential buyers that they could, by making some compromises, have a Range Rover for around the same money as a well-equipped VW Tiguan. And because the front-wheel drive layout saves weight, the base Evoque is also the greenest Evoque, emitting 158g/km of CO2 versus 168g/km for the AWD D165 auto.
Though still not great, it does put the manual into a lower company car tax bracket, but it’s hard to see why any UK ‘user-chooser’ business drivers would pick it over the PHEV Evoque P300e petrol, which emits just 31g/km, unless their boss said the plug-in’s £9k premium was a stretch too far.
