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Tuesday, August 28, 2018

The Great Evoque Buy Back


The story of how we bought a brand new Land Rover Evoque and it proved to be our worse purchase ever.

Despite being very classy inside out, the Evoque may have been the worst choice we’ve ever made. Here’s why:

The Evoque only comes with one engine choice and that’s a 2-liter turbocharged four-cylinder pumping out 240hp. The engine doesn’t feel short on puff thanks to high torque at low revs, and it certainly does feel very light on its feet when you’re driving around town or if you decided to put your foot down on the highway. The transmission is nicely geared to the engine and doesn’t feel all that fussy, our only problem with it is that (this is the first time we’ve experienced this with a Land Rover product) is the transmission was leaking oil. We took the vehicle back in to have some repairs done and wasn’t given the vehicle back until three weeks later. This is how we managed to test drive so many different Land Rovers because were constantly in and out of loaner vehicles. Once we gotten our Evoque back from the shop we noticed that again the problems weren’t quite done yet, the engine light came on and shortly after that the whole car completely stalled. We had to phone up Land Rover Dealer (again) and have the Evoque towed and we were given another loaner car. You’d think at a certain point, your investment in an expensive luxury crossover would be rewarding, but so far it has been a nightmare.

Shortly after getting our Evoque back, the issues just didn’t stop there. Early the following morning, we decided to drive over to a wedding near the state line. We were going to take the Evoque since it’s been in the shop now over four times and had less than 1,000 miles on it. The first thing we noticed when turning on the engine is that the gear selector didn’t rise from the console like it normally does. We turned the car off and turned it back on a few times and the gear selector wouldn’t rise from the console. We waited an hour and decided to try again and still the same results, we had to ring up Land Rover Dealer and they gave us another loaner. This is how had managed to get the Range Rover (supercharged eight-cylinder), which in our eyes is the worse vehicle to take on a road trip, but we had an ultra-luxurious Range Rover and went on our way. The dealer phoned us while at the wedding to inform us that our Evoque had some kind of electrical issues and they would have to send it back to the manufacturer to resolve the issue. This didn’t really bother us because what we thought at the time was the vehicle was going to get fixed properly by Land Rover. Boy we were wrong for thinking that!

Our Evoque finally came back from the factory after being there for about six weeks, and we went from the Range Rover to the LR4 which we kept the remainder of the six-weeks. The mechanic promised us that Land Rover fixed our Evoque and we should have no problems at all with the vehicle. I decided since I was off for the day to run some errands and drop by at my parent’s house. The electrical issues that we were promised were resolved were not, the vehicle wouldn’t start. The steering wheel moved up and down and the instrumental panel pretty much had a seizure, all the warning lights flashed and the alarm system kept honking. It was quite embarrassing actually as this wasn’t’ a cheap car to begin with and well to not even be able to go anywhere was what made it even more embarrassing. I had to ring up Land Rover Dealer (again) and get the damn thing towed back to the dealership. They claimed they couldn’t find anything wrong with the car and that it started up normally and was fine, even though the tow-truck driver couldn’t jump start the vehicle and told me he had to bring it in. I got my Evoque back and once again, the problems kept coming. The engine check light came on and stayed on the remainder of the time we owned the vehicle and once again we kept having electrical issues with the gear selector and the headlights kept malfunctioning.
We took the Evoque back to the dealership and yet again they told us that there was nothing they could do about it because the issues couldn’t be ‘fixed’ and well, after sitting at the repair shop for weeks at a time, we were phoned by Land Rover and they offered to buy back our vehicle. We took the offer and got our money back from the purchase and ended up buying a Mitsubishi Outlander Sport. We settled on something cheaper this time around since we were planning to move into our new home and needed to save the money.

Don’t get us wrong, we’ve test driven several Land Rover products and we loved them. They are amazing to drive and are such beauties to look at. What we loathe the most is that despite them being so glamorous, they have horrid reliability. The newer ones we've test driven the infotainment systems were a complete disaster.

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