Kevin Ritchie recently spent some time with two SUVs that are really worlds apart: the Range Rover Evoque and Mitsubishi Pajero. He fell in love with one of them.
Johannesburg - Every now and again, you get a car that fits you like a glove – a vehicle that stands out like a beacon in the sea of test vehicles that ebb and flow through the Saturday Star every year.
The Range Rover Evoque is one of them.
I never thought it would be. For a start, it’s an SUV, a class of vehicle I’m not exactly enamoured of, and it was a car Saturday Star motoring editor Brendan Seery noted had been unfairly decried as a “poseur’s car”. The detractors weren’t exactly wrong. It’s difficult to think good things of a car that once had a limited run designed by Posh Spice and was otherwise known for the number of local schlebs chosen as brand ambassadors with their own personalised vehicles to kerb hop in.
And yet, against all these odds, it’s a car I fell in love with.
For a start, it sits low on the road unlike the typical SUV with a high centre of gravity. It’s spacious. You can actually get five people into it and there actually is space in the boot for all of their luggage.
Aesthetically, it’s luxurious; heated leather seats, leather-covered steering wheel, push-button start, top-notch sound system complete with 11 speakers, CD, USB port, Bluetooth phone connection all controlled on the main console and/or the steering wheel, split fore and aft air con. The Evoque comes with a range of features – and the opportunity to customise the vehicle, from a panoramic roof to DVD players in the back of the driver and front passenger’s headrests.
Ergonomically, everything is exactly within fingertip reach from the driver’s seat, while the 9-speed (yes, 9-speed) automatic box provides a driving experience that is as smooth as it is responsive, particularly in the 2.2 diesel under test. But here’s the thing, it can do the business off road too; the Terrain Response system adjusts the suspension depending on the terrain. You can select grass/gravel/snow, mud and ruts or sand.
I didn’t take the vehicle through the Free State, so I don’t know if mud and ruts is Euro-speak for potholes. But if you have an Evoque and want to test this, try the patch of road between Dealesville and Hertzogville. Do it at speed. It’s the kind of place that should have Land Rover’s techies in raptures.
USEFUL GADGETS
For those of us rarely venturing beyond the concrete jungle of the shopping mall, park assist is very useful even though the Evoque is dinky in comparison to other vehicles in its class. There’s blind-spot monitoring, which is a boon both on the motorway and in the CBD badlands, while the onboard GPS comes preset for 22 sub-Saharan African countries and 72 000km of “navigable roads”, once again appealing to your inner adventurer, although most of us would be happy to successfully arrive at the latest development in the north without feeling like Stanley.
It’s also a distinctive, very attractive looking vehicle, unlike the other Land Rover offerings, which are either big and boxy redux 1970s aesthetics or marginally modified from the 1950s Meccano clones that once dotted the tracks all the way from Messina to Cairo.
Perhaps the key to its success is the very fact that it was designed by a woman.
I drive an old Yaris; the iconic one that was designed by a woman, with all the bins and storage space in the right place; the intuitive place. Toyota ruined that when the boffins upgraded the model – there probably wasn’t a woman among them in the design team.
The 2.2 l diesel starts at R628 100, while the 2l petrol is listed at R632 800. The diesel will give you 140kW and 420Nm. The petrol pumps out more power at 177kW, but less torque at 340Nm.
PAJERO, ON THE OTHER HAND...
There definitely doesn’t appear to have been any feminine insight in the design of Mitsubishi’s short wheel base Pajero.
Like the Evoque, this is another exceptionally popular car on Joburg’s roads. You don’t need the impressive road clearance for potholes, but it is undoubtedly handy for clambering over islands in the middle of the road to sidestep gridlock.
This is a serious off-roader (don’t ask me, ask Willem van de Putte, our resident 4x4 expert); it’s got all the bells and whistles in the cab to lock the diffs and engage low range. There’s independent suspension, a whole host of different wheel lock permutations and gear ratios from two-wheel drive high range to four-wheel drive low range at speed at the flick of a switch.
It boasts the usual alphabet soup of safety features; ABS, EBD, ASTC (I had to look that one up, it’s active traction and stability control). The steering wheel is leather and wood and has as many controls as you could ever want. There’s a multi-use centre consol carrying GPS, sound system, Bluetooth phone connector, altimeter, compass and onboard computer. There’s keyless entry like the Evoque. There are bags of mod cons, which match the Evoque more or less. The interior is upmarket, wood panelling on the dash, muted tones, leather trim on the seats and even the gear shift. Outside it looks like the business; big, brutish, solid but the elephant in the room is how practical is it?
You can’t swing a cat inside the cab. If you are carrying passengers behind you, they’re going to be squashed, there’s no room for their luggage. And, if you’re going off road, with a roof tent, you’ll have to put down the back seat to put all your kit there – or pull a trailer which effectively kills the whole point of the vehicle. But that’s not all – for a big, impressive-looking vehicle, I picked up a serious lag in the 3.2l diesel engine – even though it’s more powerful than the Evoque’s 2.2l putting out 144kW and 441Nm.
It was a bit gutless going up hills frankly, unless you thrashed it. It tended to wallow a bit on the road and was a big sod to park. The only thing it’s got going for it is its price – R569 900 – but truth be told, I felt far more of a poser in it than the Evoque. I’m obviously more metrosexual than northern suburbs Kingsley Holgate wannabe.
Saturday Star