Let's try clear a few points up.
As 'Gianclaudio' says above, no one in real 4WD-requiring conditions takes Land Rover products seriously. When did you last see an NGO or a military with one? Even the British Army ditched the Land Rover(Defender). No one other than toffs in the UK - who, like the Queen's granddaughter, Sara Phillips, get them given free for advertising purposes - or parasites on the taxpayers' tab(politicians/senior civil servants/cops/security services etc.) have them. Farmers in the UK, once the bedrock of *real* demand for the original L/Rover(now called Defender), have long gone to Jap-mainly 4WD pick-ups; and the new VW Amarok is gaining market share.
Land Rover has abandoned real 4WD markets, 'cos they had their asses handed to them by the Japs, like from the Toyota Landcruiser and Hilux, from the 1970s onwards.
Land Rover should die. It's an embarrassment to the new managers at JLR. They wish they could just call everything Range Rover. The fact that they can't make a genuinely competitive 4WD utility vehicle to save their lives, like an Amarok, Navara, Landcruiser, Patrol, Gelaendewagen, etc., compels them to cater to the faux 4WD sector.
'Range Rover', the brand, is for wealthy poseurs, never likely to go near conditions genuinely requiring 4WD. The whole idea of an outright luxury SUV, or in reality a 5m/16' long, jacked-up estate vehicle, burdened with carrying around a weight penalty of circa 200 kg in extra hardware for 4WD, extra ground clearance and axle articulation, is the height of absurdity, when an equivalent 2WD limousine does everything required of it much better.
This means there is no competitor for the Range Rover. The Merc GL is not a direct competitor. Yes, as I have shown, it still beats the top of the range new L405 in every metric, but it is not conceived as a tart's parlour on wheels, as is the Range Rover. It's meant to be a up to 7-seater sports utility vehicle, with the emphasis on utlity; one that combines luxury/convenience features with this utlity. It is meant to be affordable to a sizable demogrpahic, hence it is around $30k-$50k less than the R/Rover.
As I said before, Land Rover has tapped into a recent phenomenon of an aspirant clientèle wishing to ape the lifestyles of vacuous celebs like Victoria Beckham(god help us), hence the large proportion of women buying the Evoque. It's a truism that the shorter the stature of the person the larger the vehicle they crave, to make up for their own physical and psychological shortcomings. These sad souls adore the ability to literally tower over other road users and mortals. The 'command position' of the Range Rover talks directly to these insecure beings.
What I'm saying is, that other car makers have not set out to make overtly, explicitly luxury jacked-up, faux-4WD estate cars, for short people. The Audi Q7 and Merc GL, for example, still have a shred of utlity decency and base engineering for purpose, before their luxury personas.
The success in the market place of the Evoque, the 2005 R/Rover Sport, and potentially, for a short while, the new L405, has unfortunately compelled other makers to follow suit. The still utility based 2013 Merc GL is not one of them, but the
concept from Bentley for an SUV is meant directly to challenge and oneupmanship the R/Rover. How sad that a magnificent engineering company like Volkswagen have to turn out tarts' boudoirs like the forthcoming Bentley SUV, because Land Rover has made such ridiculous vehicles acceptable, all because of their inability to compete on functional terms.
The Evoque is a joke in functional terms. It's massively over-priced, cramped inside compared to its cheaper competitors, uneconomical, suffers numerous quality glitches, is slow, dangerous to other road users due to its blind spots and cartoonish door mirrors, etc,. etc., but because some clown like Beckham was pictured pouting with it, 30s-, 40s-year old women would give their Gucci handbags to be seen behind the wheel of it, or not, as most are 5'2"(62 inches) tall.
My point is, Land Rover has basically entered into a kind of faustian pact. Due to their fundamental inability to make functional, reliable, value for money, proper vehicles, with a smidgen of pupose, for over 60 years, they've resorted to selling their soul for short term gain, by turning out cringe-worthy, land-going gin palaces, not vehicles as most people understand the term, aimed directly at the terminally insecure, mainly women, and those whose money probably comes from usurious banking, and other associated 'industries', designed to larceny wealth from the majority to the one-per cent of the one-percent, the oligarch and kleptocrat classes, with zero taste and zero conscience, 'ensconced' in their ersatz 'luxury' behemoths.
As with Faust, though, there's a quid-pro-quo, for selling out. First, others will copy, however much they'd really wish not to. And knowing VW group, the Bentley and Lamborghini SUVs will be top-notch, engineering wise. Then there'll be the flood of medium-range competitors, like the Porsche Macan, the BMW X4, the Merc MLC, and so on, in the next two years.
But secondly, what will really kill these ridiculous vehicles will be gasoline and energy prices. The more the central banks print to bail out their buddies, who buy these crazy things, the more it drives the price of gas/petrol, and food, and energy and so on, up, which is sending western economies into depression. Not only will be it like 2008 replayed, post Lehmans, it will be much worse, with no replay of the 2009-2011 fake 'recovery. People, including the 'aspirant' 'middle-class' females, will go back to functional, utility vehicles, if they can even afford that, and makers of small, fuel efficient, functional vehicles will be the only ones to survive. Which probably explains why Tata was rumoured to be trying to IPO JLR this year, before the expected crash of late 2012/2013. Too bad looks like they missed the boat, post the Facebook debacle. Cheers.
