Happy birthday Range Rover Evoque! The compact SUV has celebrated its fifth year of production at Jaguar Land Rover’s Halewood manufacturing facility near Liverpool. With over half a million units sold globally in more than 180 countries (excluding this ‘Chinese Domestic Version’) since 2011, the Evoque is the fastest selling Land Rover of all time.
Since the first Evoque rolled off the production line on July 4, 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 model in 2011.
Here are some interesting figures from the 24-hour production at Halweood. 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 eight hour shift. A total of 1.7 billion Evoque parts have been fitted in the ‘Trim and Final’ assembly area, travelling over 2.5 million miles of conveyor system.
Earlier this year, Halewood began building a the Evoque Convertible, billed as the world’s first luxury SUV convertible and another first for Land Rover.
“During my 25 years at Jaguar Land Rover it has been the last five years that have been the most eventful, exciting and rewarding. The impact which Evoque has made to our business and to Halewood is nothing short of transformational. I am immensely proud of the Halewood team; their pride, passion and commitment to getting the job done and going above and beyond is second to none,” said Halewood operations director Richard Else.
JLR, owned by Indian giant Tata, has invested £600 million at the Halewood plant since 2010 to support the Evoque, Land Rover Discovery Sport (2014) and the Evoque Convertible (2016). Local production also started in China in 2015, and more recently, announced in Brazil.
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