Yahoo Autos The Range Rover Evoque Convertible Is the Drop Top Cruiser, Reincarnated
"So," the graying hippie asked as I handed the keys to the valet, "how is it?" His walking stick, and Vibram FiveFinger shoes, pointed in the general direction of the Range Rover Evoque Convertible I'd been driving.
"It's surprisingly good," I gushed. "I know it looks kind of silly, but it's the perfect car for this week."
By that, I meant Monterey Car Week, the annual gathering of fabulously wealthy car collectors, their prized antique vehicles, and freeloading autojournalists like myself. Land Rover provided the dazzling white Evoque Convertible as my personal dinghy to waft between events at the four-day old-car extravaganza.
"It's like a Nissan Murano CrossCabriolet, but way better looking," I offered.
"I know," the man said. "I own a CrossCabriolet."
As a two-door drop-top based on a family crossover, the Evoque Convertible inevitably invites comparison to Nissan's bizarre three-year experiment in confounding customers. But while the CrossCabriolet traded on notoriety earned by its comically unconventional styling, the Evoque Convertible's allure runs a little deeper. It scratches a very peculiar itch, in a way that nothing else on the market today can. And Monterey Car Week provided the perfect backdrop to experience the al fresco CUV.
This car has been a long time coming. Land Rover first showed a concept soft-top Evoque at the Geneva Motor Show in 2012. Nearly two years went by before spies caught development mules in testing. Land Rover confirmed the car for production in spring of 2015, and finally showed the finished product at the end of that year. Monterey Car Week was the first time the Evoque Convertible set tires on U.S. roads.
That's a long time to maintain excitement over any car, much less a niche variant of a compact family 4x4. But wherever I went in my four days with the Evoque Convertible, it was a magnet for eyeballs.
Today, midsize crossovers are what most people think of as "normal cars." Even the most car-blind among us would find the general CUV proportions familiar. That makes Range Rover's decision to chop the roof off its cute-ute more dramatic and unexpected than the biggest wing ever affixed to the likes of a Lamborghini. To people on the street, the Evoque Convertible is as surprising as seeing your boss wearing a fluorescent green wig: The context is what makes it outrageous.
And like your boss in a costume wig, the Evoque convertible benefits from a refreshing lack of self-seriousness. The backdrop of Monterey Car Week highlighted this exquisitely. Among painstakingly restored classics and garish hypercars, the topless crossover is charmingly approachable. Driving it around is the ultimate antidote for that one-percenter affliction, Supercar Scowl.
It's a good thing, too, because the Evoque's driving dynamics alone won't make you grin. The ragtop Rover weighs in at a shade over 4500 lbs.; the 240-hp four-cylinder and nine-speed automatic work hard, but the thrust only seems to kick in after you've muttered something impolite about the turbo lag. As for the steering and brakes, they're not so much "firm" as they are "soft-boiled."
And you know what? That's fine. This thing isn't a performance machine; it's a cruiser, and at that task, it excels. Dropping the top takes 18 seconds at speeds up to 30 mph, a large-scale marionette performance that repeatedly stole the show from the revving, snorting supercars around me in Monterey's high-dollar gridlock. Leave the roof stowed. With the fiddly wind blocker installed across the rear seats, the breeze is ideal for that carefree hairdo you've been trying to perfect. At 50 or 60 mph on a coastal road, the ride is taut but not overly firm. There's a little body roll, and you're always aware of the torso-height center of gravity, but the overall experience is just delightfully pleasant. (A quick romp through the Laureles Grade's steep switchbacks showed moderate body roll and a yelp of understeer, but if you can hear the front tires in an Evoque Convertible, you're doing something wrong in life.)
I can't claim impartiality in reviewing this car. I'm convinced that our world would be vastly improved by the availability of more drop-top cruisers. They're the only cure for the sickness that makes us demand Nurburgring lap times from utility vehicles. A beloved ancestor of yours probably found great solace cruising top-down in a soft-steering, softly-sprung luxury yacht of some sort. Don Draper sure did.
The Evoque Convertible doesn't pretend to be a hot rod. Land Rover portrays it as being reasonably capable off-road, which it may very well be. But c'mon. This thing was built for the boulevard, for propping your elbow on the door, steering with two fingers, and basking in the luxury of the open air. That job used to fall to convertible versions of big, domestic family sedans. But crossovers are the new sedans, and so we end up here: With a drop-top crossover that's the perfect cruiser for 2017.
One moment during my time with the Evoque Convertible sums up the whole experience perfectly. I left my hotel early on an overcast Saturday morning to view the latest creation of a famous European sports car restomodder. Our meeting point: A mansion tucked deep in the hills of ritzy Carmel-on-the-Sea.
Much of my job feels like an elaborate game of dress-up. I can't afford most of the cars I get to drive; testing them sometimes feels like being a toddler, clomping around in dad's shoes and pretending to understand his grown-up life. That Saturday morning, in my blazer and sunglasses, zooming up the winding, fog-shrouded roads of a gated community for bazillionaires, with the top down and the seat heater on and the satellite radio tuned to Yacht Rock, had that distinct pantomime feel. Today's costume: Freewheeling son of a wealthy California power-broker, home from last night's debauchery.
As the wrought-iron mansion gates opened in front of me, with Christopher Cross breezing from the stereo, the Evoque's disembodied female GPS voice murmured "you've arrived."
Try that in a Murano CrossCabriolet.
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