Discovery Sport and Range Rover Evoque: which one to buy

When Land Rover first launched the Range Rover Evoque, it was hard to see it being anything other than a staggering success.

Entering into a general worldwide hunger for 4x4s of medium build, the Evoque looked (and continues to look) great, drives nicely and, for bout half the cost of a Range Rover Sport or a “full-fat” Range Rover, you get to have the coveted double-R badge on your driveway. With 500,000 sales since 2010, the recipe has proved a popular one.

Where, then, does that leave the Land Rover Discovery Sport? Underneath the somewhat more humble styling, the Disco Sport and the Evoque are wearing the same, er, foundation garments.

The same steel-based structure (making them the last cars in the Land Rover family to be built primarily from steel), the same electronics architecture, and now the same engine – Land Rover’s newly designed 150hp 2.0-litre “Ingenium” four-cylinder diesel which, with some time lag since it was introduced in the Evoque, has now ousted the old Ford-sourced 2.2-litre diesel from the Discovery Sport.

So, which one is better? Do we go plump for the dazzling urbanite, the one with the fancy badge? or do we prefer the handsome rural type, who cuts a fine figure in a pair of wellies?

Better value

First off, there’s some juggling of relative values to be done. Both cars cost more or less the same. A five-door Evoque kicks off with a price tag of €42,190, but you’re not going to save yourself much money by plumping for the most basic Discovery Sport – that clocks in at €41,565.

Surely the more practical Disco represents better value then? Not necessarily. Unlike the UK market, here in Ireland the basic Discovery Sport comes with five, not seven, seats as standard and there is far more usable space in the back of the slope-roofed Evoque than you would imagine.

The two cars we’re testing here are more at variance in their prices – €62,360 for the Evoque 4WD 150hp HSE (ever an unfortunate name-plate in Irish terms, but referring here to a mid-level spec, not the successor to the old Health Boards…) and €56,732 for the HSE-spec Discovery with the optional third row of folding seats plus lashings of leather and an automatic gearbox. Can the Range Rover badge bridge the €6,000 gap between the cars?

Well, not on looks, at least not so far as I’m concerned. Yes, the Evoque is handsome and those new jewell-like headlamps with their ghostly outline of LED daytime running lights smarten and freshen up a familiar face.

Yes, also our Discovery Sport was clad in an unappealing shade of what can best be described as greyish-brownish (the Disco’s shape better rewards much stronger bolder colours) but even so, I reckon the Discovery is the smarter looking of the two.

For me, the Evoque’s rear end always looks a little too truncated, and while you can’t quite get the old Freelander out of your mind when looking at the Discovery Sport, it’s still a very handsome thing.

Inside, the two cars are, perhaps unsurprisingly (same parts bin, same factory after all), very similar but again it’s the Discovery Sport which pulls out a narrow lead. Obviously, it’s the more practical of the two – the Evoque is more practical than you might expect, given that sleek shape, but it has no answer to the Discovery Sports’s extra seats and 540-litre boot.

The Evoque has surprisingly roomy rear seats, but the Sport’s rear legroom is positively bountiful, plus smaller people sitting in the back get a better view out.

Up front, both cars are disappointingly plain. Land Rover’s current cabin design style can be optimistically labelled minimalist, and rather more pertinently labelled “not as interesting as what you get in a Mercedes or an Audi”.

Certainly, both the rival Mercedes GLC and Audi Q5 have much more handsome cabins, and with better overall quality, but the worse news for Land Rover is that cars like the Kia Sorento and Hyundai Santa Fe have superior interiors.

In terms of choosing between the two here, the Discovery Sport wins again simply because it’s philosophically easier to stomach a plain cabin in a car with a Land Rover badge. Both have excellent, close to exquisite, seats though – enormously comfortable and supportive – and both benefit from a trawl of the options list, especially fitting the bigger, brighter optional 10-inch touchscreen infotainment system.

The 150hp Ingenium engine finds a better home in either than it does in, for instance, a Jaguar XE saloon. In the four-door Jag, it’s just too darned noisy but here in either Land Rover product it’s significantly more hushed.

150hp isn’t, perhaps, a lot these days but there’s a decent 380Nm of torque to play with, and the impressive nine-speed ZF automatic gearbox makes the most of what’s on offer.

Four-wheel drive

Both just sneak under the Band B2 tax limbo-pole with four-wheel drive fitted (about 90 per cent of Irish Land Rover buyers shun the cheaper, cleaner front-drive option) but you’ll struggle to match the claimed 53mpg figure. Low-40s is more about right. The Evoque is a claimed few mpg better off, and has a fractional advantage on Co2, but there’s no change in the cost of a year’s tax and in real-world conditions the economy is going to be no different.

Both are more or less identical to drive – smooth chassis (albeit both give way to a sense of the stiff-knee jitters around town) with sharp steering and a sense of genuine enjoyment and engagement in the way they drive.

A Mercedes GLC is perhaps the only match for either car in pure dynamic terms (the BMW X3 is simply too harsh-riding) but both the Kia and Hyundai seven-seaters make for better long-distance companions thanks to superior refinement.

Reliability? Land Rover has certainly had its issues over the years, but the previous Freelander, distantly mechanically related to both of these cars, is actually well regarded in the trade for its longevity so there’s at least hope.

There is something inestimably tempting about being able to say “shall we take the Range Rover this evening, darling?” Something about the sheer enjoyment of badge snobbery and the fact that while you’re actually driving a tarted-up Freelander you’ve got nominative determinism on your side.

Still though, it’s the Discovery Sport that comes out top in this little internecine war. More handsome still than the Evoque, more practical by its nature and at this price level with the cost of a couple of nice holidays in its back pocket,we’ll swap urban planning for rural idyll, thanks.

The Lowdown:

Land Rover Discovery Sport 2.0 TD4 Automatic HSE. Price: €56,732 as tested; range starts at €41,565. Power: 150hp. Torque: 380. 0-100km/h: 10.3sec. Top speed: 180km/h. Claimed economy: 5.3-litres per 100km (53mpg). CO2 emissions: 139g/km. Motor tax: €280. Rating: 4/5.

Range Rover Evoque 4wd 2.0 TD4 Auto HSE. Price: €62,360 as tested; range starts at €42,190. Power: 150hp. Torque: 380Nm. 0-100km/h: 10.0sec. Top speed: 180km/h. Claimed economy: 5.1-litres per 100km (56mpg). CO2 emissions: 134g/km. Motor tax: €280. Rating: 3/5.