'Holden's Evoke makes me smile,' says Land Rover boss

Jaguar Land Rover wasn’t angered by Holden’s decision to name its entry level VF Commodore the Evoke -- which sounds suspiciously like Land Rover’s hot-selling Evoque. On the contrary, in fact.

“It made me smile,” says Phil Popham, Jaguar Land Rover’s Global Operation Director. Speaking at the press launch of the car maker’s ultra-impressive new Range Rover Sport in the UK, Popham said a number of agencies had been asked to come up with names for the Evoque when the model was first signed off for production.

The names those agencies presented to the car-maker were “rubbish,” he said.

A head office brainstorming session hit upon the name Evoke, he said, and it struck a chord. “I liked it; it really meant something. We originally had the spelling E-V-O-K-E. But then we decided to give it a Land Rover twist by spelling it with a ‘QUE’ instead.”

And, of course, that’s the way it stayed.