Car road test: Land Rover Range Rover Evoque

The Range Rover Evoque has been given a thorough once-over. It still looks much as before with only a few nips and tucks, but almost all the money has been spent under that very pretty skin. Efficiency improves with a new family of diesel engines and there's some exciting equipment choices also on offer. It's still the one the rest are aiming at.

It's a brave new world at Land Rover right now. The Freelander's gone and the Discovery Sport has appeared, but the big news might well be the development of the Ingenium engines that look to put the company on a similar efficiency footing as the best of the Germans and Japanese. The Evoque gets the aluminium Ingenium diesel engine, built at the company's shiny new £500m Engine Manufacturing Centre in the West Midlands. This TD4 unit is 20-30kg lighter than its predecessor and delivers low levels of vibration and noise intrusion. It's offered to Evoque customers in two states of tune: 150PS in the economy-oriented eD4 front-wheel drive model, and 180PS if you prefer a bit more poke and can't do without all-wheel drive.

Should you want to go faster still, you can buy the Evoque with the punchy 240PS Si4 petrol engine. This propels a three-door car through 62mph in just 7.6 seconds and on to a top speed of 135mph. The nine-speed ZF transmission is available and it's an option you really need to tick. It shifts between gears so quickly that ZF reckons it's "below the threshold of perception". An adaptive shift programme quickly matches the driving style and includes a memory function. A Torque Vectoring by Braking feature further enhances agility and safety by redirecting torque to counteract understeer. Off-road ability is enhanced with the fitment of All-Terrain Progress Control. This function maintains a pre-determined speed - selected using the cruise control function - in forward or reverse gears between 1.1mph and 19mph, allowing the driver to concentrate on negotiating tricky terrain.

The changes continue inside with updated seats and higher-quality soft-touch materials used for the door casings. The instrument binnacle has also been redesigned. Buyers still choose between three and five-door models, the key difference between which is the amount of room in the back of the car. Go for the five-door and the roofline is subtly re-profiled such that there's 30mm of additional headroom. The rear row of seats, with seat belts and head restraints for three passengers, have 60/40 folding squabs and are equipped with ISOFIX child seat mounts. When required, luggage capacity can be expanded to a healthy1,445-litres. The three-door has a boot that is a little smaller, measuring 550-litres with the seats in place and 1,350 with them folded.

Land Rover has spent its money wisely with this Evoque. Not a lot really needed doing to the styling and the interior finish and there's only been a bit of tidying up there; mere nips, tucks and tweaks. The engine range has come in for the lion's share of the budget and it's an investment that ought to keep the Evoque at the top of the class for some time to come. Rather depressingly for the Evoque's competitors, it's only the start of the roll-out of the Ingenium engine family. It's just going to get better and better.

That's wonderful news for Evoque customers. The car's just become significantly more economical and capable, both on road and off. Just about the only thing that can really sink this model is for it to go horribly out of fashion. That doesn't look like happening any time soon, but just in case, Land Rover has concentrated on substance over style with this revision. In doing so, the brand has future-proofed its biggest money-spinner.