Land Rover Discovery 4 Review
We spend a week with the top of the range Land Rover Discovery 4 3.0 TDV6 HSE. Where does it fit in Land Rover’s line-up. Is it just the poor man’s Range Rover?
The news this year from the world of Land Rover has been focused on the origins of Land Rover’s first foray in to the world of road-going luxury – the 40th anniversary of the launch of the Range Rover – and on the future of Range Rover as personified by the Range Rover Evoque, which is almost the antithesis of all that Range Rover was conceived to be.
But Land Rover has another range of cars – apart from the iconic Defender – which are perceived to trail in the wake of the Range Rover. The Land Rover Discovery and the Land Rover Freelander may – certainly in the eyes of the car-buying public – be seen as somehow ‘Less’ than the Range Rovers, but as we discovered when we recently reviewed the 2010 Freelander 2 HSE, that really isn’t the case.
But what of the Freelander 2’s big brother – the Land Rover Discovery – which is 21 this year? For us, the Discovery is that car that cemented a place in the heart of the car buying public for Land Rover’s road-going products. It was built to be the poor man’s Range Rover, but not so poor it couldn’t benefit from some real ‘Design’ input.
Designer Jasper Conran was commissioned to build an interior for the Discovery which shouted ‘Lifestyle’ from the rooftops. Full of ‘Designery’ stuff like magazine slots in the roof and a removable stowage bag that turned in to a handbag. But even if you had to mince about in the surprisingly low-rent feel interior, the oily bits were butch enough. The ubiquitous Rover V8 slotted perfectly in to the new Discovery and made sure it drank juice like a dessicated man from Del Monte, and it made a wonderful noise.
But despite the big V8 (you could also opt for a 2.5 litre diesel if you really had to) the Discovery didn’t make a brilliant road car, at least not when it came to the twisty stuff. But it did OK, it was Land-Rover-brilliant off-road and it was a chunk cheaper than the Range Rover. And it felt it.
And it continued to feel it for the next fifteen years. Despite its versatility with seven seats and a go-anywhere reality it always felt a bit too agricultural to be truly desirable, even though it had a ‘Lifestyle’ interior and even though it was a chunk less expensive than the Range Rover. But that started to change when Land Rover introduced the Discovery 3 in 2004.
Out went the ladder chassis – great off road, poor on-road – and in came Integrated Body Frame which mated a cabin monocoque to a ladder chassis for the suspension and gearbox. The result was a transformation (relatively speaking) in on-road manners, even if the resulting underpinnings made the Discovery 3 weigh in at just a few pounds less than the Ark Royal.
But the Discovery 3 worked, even if its Jaguar engines were never going to set your hair on fire. It did the road stuff acceptably well and the interior was finally a decent place to be. It felt like the Duke’s younger sibling who became a vicar. Same lineage and same abilities, just a more friendly, less intimidating and more accommodating version. It seemed to fit.
But the 2010 Discovery 4 has gone and buggered that all up.
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