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At $17,000, Does This 2013 Land Rover Range Rover Evoque Pure Plus Have “It?”

Nice Price Or Crack PipeIs this used car a good deal? You decide!

If your AWD needs extend no further than traversing the sinuous streets of the tony Hollywood Hills waiting for your next movie gig, then today’s Nice Price or Crack Pipe Evoque may just be the car for you. That is if its price seals the deal.

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Look, it is an undeniable fact that at some point in all our lives each of us will have either driven, ridden in, or have someone provide service for us in a Ford F-series truck. That of course only applies to those of us in the U.S. For those of you elsewhere, substitute Ford Transit for F-Series and we’re all good.

Speaking of Fords and all good, yesterday’s Jalop-offered 1995 Ford F-150 4X4 was all kinds of good. Sporting a six and a stick, as well as dual tanks and an appearance that you wouldn’t be ashamed to have in your driveway, that pickup showed why the series was a perennial bestseller. At just $6,000, it apparently was a pretty good deal too. That price tag resulted in a quick sale (as relayed to me by the seller, 95F150stillrocks) as well as a solid 70 percent Nice Price win showing that the sturdy old Ford has still got it.

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What exactly is this “it” that people and things sometimes have? I certainly don’t know. All I know is that I don’t have “it.” One car that tried very hard to have “it” was the fatiguingly named Land Rover Range Rover Evoque. That amalgamation of brand names and purposefully misspelled model name is the first sign that Land Rover wanted the car to be something special—to have “it.”

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I remember the first time I drove an Evoque at a media event. Initially, my impression was that it was a really nice Ford Escape. But then it hit me who exactly it was that Land Rover was targeting with the car—it was Paris Hilton.

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Now, this epiphany proved wrong on two levels.

First, Paris Hilton was—and probably still is, for all I know—stinking rich and because of that drove cars that cost six figures and up. The Evoque, while pricy was not anywhere near that level. Secondly, at the time of the Evoque’s intro, back in 2011, Hilton was no longer a thing. By then the pop culture industry had moved on from whatever whispy entertainment her high society antics provided. That made her an unlikely persona around which the Evoque was conceived. Who then was the Land Rover soft-roader’s intended audience? I guess we’ll just have to figure that out.

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We can start with this 2013 Land Rover Range Rover Evoque Pure Plus offered up for sale in Hollywood, California. Who is the seller? Well, we can glean from the ad that it’s someone in—or at least seeking entrance to—the entertainment industry. That’s evident in the ad’s second sentence—“I primarily drove it in the city for auditions – no long-distance mileage.”

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Okay, so we now know that the car’s 75K was done tooling around LA and not on long, low-stress jaunts. That tells us a lot.

This is the five-door body style which is much more versatile than the three-door, and hence much more common on the used car market. It comes with Rover’s 240 horsepower 2-litre four and a six-speed Aisin automatic with flappy paddle actuators behind the wheel. The AWD system offers terrain traction switching although this is definitely not an off-roader in the traditional Land Rover ilk.

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The Pure Plus model was a mid-level trim package that upgraded the interior to leather seating surfaces and a panoramic glass roof above that through which to moon. Other package components included more power controls for the front seats and a cup-holder armrest in back.

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The black over almond color combo on the car looks pretty elegant, even if the squashed Sport body style doesn’t. Aside from the personal taste on the aesthetics of the design, the bodywork appears to be without flaw. The interior presents similarly, although the pictures imply that it could use a good detailing.

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Mechanically… well, first off this is a Land Rover so don’t expect it to take a licking and keep on ticking in classic Timex fashion. By the way, there’s another one of my out of date references. Exemplifying that, the turbo was recently replaced under warranty. Other maintenance measures recently undertaken include a cooling system flush and an oil change. As an additional enticement, the car rolls on a fresh set of Pirellis.

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That and the note of a clear title is pretty much all the info the seller provides on the car’s current status, choosing to spend the majority of their ad on the feature list likely pulled from a brochure or the Land Rover site.

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That’s okay since there’s a lot of luxury and convenience to be had here. The question of the day, however, is whether or not that all adds up to the seller’s $17,000 asking price.

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Before we dive in, I need to note that, when it comes to modern Land Rover products, the Evoque seems to have an aura of invincibility around their value that eludes other members of the marque’s lineup. If you look at asking prices for these cars, they all seem about 50% higher than you would expect. Does that mean the Evoque has that elusive “it” that everyone is desperate to obtain? Does that also mean that this one is worth that $17,000 price?

You decide!

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Los Angeles, CA Craigslist, or go here if the ad disappears.

Help me out with NPOCP. Hit me up at rob@jalopnik.com and send me a fixed-price tip. Remember to include your Kinja handle.

For GREAT deals on a new or used Land Rover check out Envision Land Rover TODAY!

At $17,500, Is This 2009 Jeep Grand Cherokee SRT-8 A Grand Bargain?

Nice Price Or Crack PipeIs this used car a good deal? You decide!

The seller of today’s Nice Price or Crack Pipe hot rod Grand Cherokee says he’s offering it at a discount because it needs a gas cap. Let’s see if that’s to be believed, and if that fuel-filler discount caps this truck’s bona fides.

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There was a good bit of discussion last Friday over who exactly our candidate 1999 Mercedes SLK230 was for. These cars are too heavy and underpowered to really serve as an engaging sports car, but with a rare stickshift, Friday’s example wasn’t really for the grand touring—to Applebee’s—crowd either.

As has been said, however, there’s an ass for every seat, and at $5,800, a narrow 55 percent of you felt the ass that ended up in that SLK230’s driver’s seat would do so knowing they got a good deal.

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With that Nice Price win out of the way, let’s head back to Phoenix for another contender, albeit one from the opposite end of the spectrum from that two-seater Benz.

This 2009 Jeep Grand Cherokee SRT-8 was the marque’s attempt at pulling off a Porsche Cayenne. That’s a high-performance SUV with no pretension of serious off-road capability. With its massive 420-horsepower 6.2-litre Hemi V8, Mercedes-sourced five-speed automatic, and Brembo brakes, the SRT-8 certainly had the hardware. A lowered and stiffened suspension aided handling on-road but both that and open diffs at each end meant the SRT-8’s off-road capabilities were practically non-existent. I can vouch that the WK SRT-8 can still handle dirt roads with ease since I tested one for Hooniverse in that manner back in that day. It did just fine.

Illustration for article titled At $17,500, Is This 2009 Jeep Grand Cherokee SRT-8 A Grand Bargain?

This 124,000-mile example is seeming not doing just fine. The Jeep’s seller notes that, for whatever reason, its siren song hasn’t been on their playlist of late. Due to that, it’s been relegated to a lonely existence in a parking garage.

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At least, that’s the seller’s claim for why it’s up for grabs. The sale is apparently totally unrelated to the CEL the truck presently is throwing. The ad says that’s an emissions error which will be solved by the replacement of the gas cap. Unfortunately, a completely full day planner has prevented the seller from taking the truck in for this repair, and hence it’s being offered with the glaring instrument panel fault intact.

Now, loathe be it for me to question such a diagnosis. I do, however, have a good bit of experience with evaporative emissions system issues and have found that the gas cap is almost invariably not the problem. Most often it’s a break in one of the myriads of hoses in the closed-loop system that carries fuel vapor from the tank to the charcoal canister, and eventually to the engine.

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Illustration for article titled At $17,500, Is This 2009 Jeep Grand Cherokee SRT-8 A Grand Bargain?

That typically required a smoke test to suss out and then a good bit of disassembly/reassembly to repair. On the other hand, it could be just the gas cap.

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The truck otherwise looks to be in great shape. The black paint presents well, as do the 20-inch SRT-8 alloys. The four-pot Brembos peek out from behind those up front as do smaller editions in the rear.

Inside all that is a fully-loaded interior with leather and Alcantara sport seats up front and a matching bench behind those. You get a fat steering wheel to grab and that’s also wrapped in dead cow. The rest of the interior is typical plasticky Jeep, but there are a lot of buttons and a fancy Nav stereo to make up for that.

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Okay, so there’s that issue with the CEL and I noted at the outset that the seller was discounting the price because of that. According to the description in the ad, these trucks should go for between “$19K and $24K,” claiming the average price on AutoTrader to be “$20K.” The asking for this one is $17,500 and that’s a clean title price. Of course, you’d need to (A) believe the seller as to those comp values and (B) think that the CEL repair would cost a lot less than that disparity. Let’s see what you think.

Illustration for article titled At $17,500, Is This 2009 Jeep Grand Cherokee SRT-8 A Grand Bargain?

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Could this SRT-8 Jeep be worth that $17,500 asking with the CEL? Or, does that dashboard light make this a not so bright idea?

You decide!

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Phoenix, AZ Craigslist, or go here if the ad disappears.

H/T to David G. for the hookup!

Help me out with NPOCP. Hit me up at rob@jalopnik.com and send me a fixed-price tip. Remember to include your Kinja handle.

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