The world’s most popular and luxurious compact SUV, the Range Rover Evoque, reached a historic milestone today as it celebrated its fifth year of production at Jaguar Land Rover’s advanced manufacturing facility near Liverpool, UK.
With over half a million sold globally in more than 180 countries since 2011, the Range Rover Evoque is Land Rover’s greatest sales success story. Since the first Evoque rolled off the production line on 4 July 2011, sales have increased five-fold from just over 22,000 in 2011 to more than 108,000 in 2015 – with a new Evoque now rolling off the production line every 170 seconds. At the same time, the workforce has also trebled to more than 4,000, with 1,500 recruited specifically to support the launch of this record-breaking vehicle in 2011.
Over the past five years, employees have clocked up more than three million night-shift hours, consuming 668,000 cups of coffee, half a million eggs and 125,000 slices of toast to keep energy levels up during an 8 hour shift. A total of 1.7 billion Evoque parts have been fitted in the Trim and Final assembly area, travelling over 4 million km of conveyor system.
Earlier this year, Halewood began building a new soft-top member of the Evoque family, the Range Rover Evoque Convertible. Despite the typical British summer weather, employees at Halewood enjoyed the roof-down experience of driving the Evoque Convertible on the Land Rover Experience off-road course as part of the birthday celebrations.
Globally, the Evoque has picked up nearly 200 awards over the last five years. Halewood Operations has also picked 11 regional business awards and recently won its first national award as it took home the ‘UK Manufacturer of the Year’ crown at the Insider MADE in the UK Manufacturing Awards 2016.
Jaguar Land Rover has invested £600 million at the Halewood plant since 2010 to support the Range Rover Evoque (2011), Land Rover Discovery Sport (2014) and the Evoque Convertible (2016). The Evoque is also the fastest selling Land Rover of all time, accounting for one in four Land Rovers sold around the world in 2015. Local production also started in China in 2015, and more recently, announced in Brazil.
