Range Rover Evoque production starts

The First Production Range Rover Evoque rolls out at Halewood

The first production Range Rover Evoque has rolled off the Land Rover line at Halewood. Land Rover already has 18,000 advance orders for the Evoque.

You could be forgiven for thinking that the Range Rover Evoque was already in production. But you’d be wrong.

The apparent plethora of Evoques which have turned up at every car event of 2011 – and a fair few non-car events too – are all pre-production models, built by Land Rover to promote their forthcoming baby Range Rover. But now the real deal begins.

The first production Range Rover Evoque – a 5-door Evoque Dynamic in white – has rolled off the production line at Halewood, but it’s not heading off to a customer, at least not yet.

In fact this particular Evoque never will end up in a customer’s hands as it’s destined for the Heritage Motor Museum at Gaydon.

But the first 15k Evoques are planned as a dealer stockpile before customer-specified cars are built, so if you’re one of the 18,000 who’ve already placed an order for an Evoque, don’t get too excited. But it won’t be long.

Those advance orders for a car almost no one outside Land Rover has driven is a testament not just to the product on offer but the confident, and more than competent, marketing Land Rover has done.

To be taking a car so different in many ways to Land Rover’s traditional range and be able to rack up 18,000 advance orders is no mean feat. That the demographic – half female and aged 30-40 – is also vastly different to other Land Rover models makes the launch even more impressive.

To gear up for the Evoque production Land Rover has doubled their workforce at Halewood to more than 3,000, but it’s not just the Halewood workforce which will benefit.

Seventy-five per cent of Evoques are destined for export – bringing in £2 billion a year to the UK – and fifty per cent of components are made in the UK by 40 UK suppliers, contributing a further £2 billion to the UK economy.

So the Evoque is a completely different kettle of fish to anything Land Rover has done before, both in its conception and its marketing. That new approach is probably encapsulated in the photos Land Rover sent us of the first Halewood car.

In the past we might have expected photos of a production line, or maybe the new Land Rover up to its axles in mud. Instead we get glitter balls and smoke, a half-famous face or two and a proper little party scene. This is the ‘Hello’ school of marketing. But it’s working.

As a reminder – as this is all about a new car – the Evoque will cost from £27,955, be available in three trims- Pure, Prestige and Dynamic – and can be had in either 2WD or 4 WD.

Let’s hope the hype and expectation turns in to an Evoque which delivers all it seems to promise.

There’s a good chance.