What It Is: Possibly this year’s best automotive reason to scream “Aaaaaargh!” at the skies while emptying any handgun you happen to be holding into the uncaring heavens, just like in Point Break. That, and also a cabriolet version of the Range Rover Evoque.
Why It Matters: Land Rover has threatened to do this for some time. The company brought an Evoque cabriolet concept to the Geneva motor show back in 2012, and we’d heard in the summer of 2013 that production had been approved. But then things went silent. Most of us figured that the good folks in Coventry had been taking too many drugs, or maybe not quite enough, and that like most such clearly ludicrous ideas it had been quietly dropped.
These shots are confirmation that didn’t happen, with the convertible version seemingly set for launch later this year as part of the Evoque’s midcycle refresh (which, Land Rover recently announced, will include full-LED headlamps). As such, it really will be boldly going where only Nissan and AMC have gone before. There have been plenty of SUVs with removable roofs—think Jeep Wrangler or Land Rover’s own icon, the Defender—but this will join only the wonderfully dumb Murano CrossCabriolet and the early 1980s AMC Eagle Sundancer among those that can be considered full-fledged convertibles. Which means that Land Rover is either well ahead of the curve or set to be laughed out of court.
Platform: It’s an Evoque without a roof, and although the decapitation will give Land Rover’s engineers some structural issues to solve, it shouldn’t be too hard for them to integrate some underbody reinforcement. Another question, albeit one that’s likely to be asked only very rarely by the sort of people who buy it, is how the Evoque cabriolet will cope if asked to perform any half-serious off-roading—with its roof up or down.
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