It's the fastest Range Rover Evoque you can buy

Always fancied a Range Rover Evoque, but worried it lagged too far behind your neighbour’s VW Golf R? Fret no longer. Land Rover’s latest round of updates brings a slightly surprising engine to both the Evoque and the Discovery Sport.

It brings several engines, in fact, both from the Jaguar Land Rover ‘Ingenium’ 2.0-litre four-cylinder range. But the most interesting is a petrol unit producing 286bhp.

That’s slap-bang in hot hatch territory, and while it may lag slightly behind the latest Golf R, the Evoque and Disco’s 295lb ft of torque is stronger.

Fit the engine to the Evoque and you get a 6.0sec 0-62mph time and a 144mph top speed. If you plan to prove those figures, you’ll be pleased to know there are new sports seats, too, with “perforated and distinctive horizontally-ribbed inserts”. For your pleasure.

If you think it’s all a bit uncouth, there’s a more, um, couth 237bhp available in both petrol and diesel 2.0-litre engines. The latter is probably the most sensible pick, with 369lb ft of torque matched with a slimmer CO2 output and far chunkier fuel economy than its petrol equivalent. In the Disco Sport, it’ll do 44mpg, which isn’t shabby at all for a seven-seat SUV.

But you want the hot hatch engine, don’t you?