Land Rover: A year of Range Rover Evoque production and 80,000 sales

Land Rover is celebrating a year of Range Rover Evoque production and sales of 80,000 Evoques.

The Range Rover Evoque continues to astonish with its sales performance and a seemingly unquenchable thirst from buyers to grab as many as Land Rover can build, despite its distinctly premium price structure.

But that’s because Land Rover has managed to be right on the Zeitgeist with the Evoque, which conspires to offer a properly premium feel in a smaller package with no loss of ability compared to the full size Range Rover, so even car buyers with deep pockets can feel they’re being sane when they scratch their car buying itch and yet have no real compromise in ability or image.

It also doesn’t hurt that the Evoque has arrived in showrooms looking just like a concept car with its oversize wheels and almost comic coupe profile; on paper it’s incongruous, in the flesh it’s a triumph.

All this has conspired to make the Evoque the quickest selling car Land Rover has ever made, with sales of 80,000 Evoques racked up during the first year of production.

Even better for Land Rover, those sales haven’t come at the expense of other models in the Land Rover range. The Freelander 2 is still selling at a rate of around 50,000 a year and owners of the Range Rover look to have been buying an Evoque for ‘er indoors instead of trading down themselves. And with 90 per cent of Evoque buyers new to the brand, Land Rover has really hit the jackpot with the Evoque.

But the Evoque story isn’t just going to be more of the same going forward. The franchise looks set to grow with the Evoque Sport, the Evoque convertible and perhaps even a Grand Evoque.

But before that happens Land Rover are going to be busy with the launch of the 2013 Range Rover, closely followed by the 2014 Range Rover Sport, never mind the new, re-focused, Freelander and Discovery in the pipeline.

Long may Land Rover’s success continue to burgeon.