Land Rover Discovery 2017 Review :
Jaguar Land Rover likes the initial experiences of its new vehicles to be in environments that prevent anything other than the most rudimentary dynamic assessment. Back in January, for example, our first spin in the Jaguar F-Pace took place on a frozen lake in Sweden. Now our initial turn in the new Land Rover Discovery is happening on a vast private estate in Scotland, one nearly the same size as the city of Chicago, where we discover it’s possible to drive for three solid hours on a route consisting entirely of gravel and mud. As you would expect, the new Discovery is very good indeed on gravel and mud.
Land Rover is supposed to be about adventure, but these days it’s also about luxury, the famous badge likely inspiring just as many thoughts of high-rise limos as of wilderness-bashing trucks. The outgoing LR4 was decisively outsold in the United States by the posher Range Rover, which is why the new version (which returns to the Discovery name its predecessor kept in other markets) has moved upmarket. It has lost the square-rigged styling of the LR4 and earlier Discovery models and looks more compact than the prior version. This is a visual illusion; at 195.7 inches, it’s actually 5.6 inches longer, while its 72.7-inch height is 1.6 inches shorter. The design language clearly shows its relationship to the Range Rover and the Range Rover Sport, although the Disco is taller and has fractionally less ostentation. The three cars share the same Premium Lightweight Architecture (PLA) platform and are set to be produced alongside one another at JLR’s Solihull plant in the U.K., with JLR also confirming the Discovery will be one of the cars produced at its new plant in Slovakia when that opens.
Style: Some Gained, Some Lost
The LR4’s distinctive angular lines will be missed by some. The new Discovery has become far more of a lifestyle SUV, and the profile view offers more than a hint of Ford Explorer. The rear is less convincing, with the liftgate now a one-piece unit (the LR4 had clamshell-style upper and lower panels), with a strange offset license-plate location despite the vehicle’s having lost the stepped rear glass of its forebears. This looked faintly ridiculous when filled with the gawky U.K. license plates on the cars we drove in Scotland. It’s possible it will work better with more modestly proportioned U.S. plates—but equally possible that it won’t.
The cabin is more convincingly upmarket, clearly aimed at buyers swayed by plusher rivals such as the new Audi Q7 and Volvo XC90. Material quality feels a magnitude higher than in the LR4. The Discovery uses the analog instruments from the Evoque and Discovery Sport rather than the full digital panel of the Range Rover, but in every other regard it resembles its more expensive siblings in fit and finish. There’s plenty of space and ample seating adjustments in the front, with equally impressive room in back.
Power-folding third-row seats will be an option in the United States, with the chairs motoring themselves up from the cargo floor and back again at the press of a button. Land Rover claims that these rearmost seats are adult size; that would depend on finding particularly flexible, uncomplaining volunteers—although there’s more room in the wayback than in the third row of the Mazda CX-9, which we don’t classify as adult-friendly. It is much more spacious and practical than either of Land Rover’s other seven-seat offerings, the Discovery Sport and the Range Rover Sport.
Making It Move
The choice of powertrains for American versions reflects the Discovery’s position in the middle of the Land Rover range. The engines are V-6s in supercharged gasoline and turbocharged diesel flavors, with the outside chance the U.S. might also get one of the four-cylinder diesel versions designed for Europe. There are no V-8s. The gas V-6 is basically carried over from the LR4, producing 340 horsepower and 332 lb-ft of torque. The Td6 is the same engine as in the diesel-powered Range Rover, with 254 horsepower and 443 lb-ft of torque (impressive, but a measure off the 664 lb-ft of the Europe-only Audi SQ7 TDI.) We’d love to be able to give you a clue how these fared against Land Rover’s performance figures—the gasoline Discovery’s claimed 6.9-second zero-to-60-mph time makes it easily the quickest Discovery or LR4 variant yet, and we expect to better that by a bit. But with our test route slathered with axle-deep mud, rough gravel tracks, and the occasional rocky scramble, we didn’t get a chance to confirm anything other than the Discovery’s ability to launch itself on a slippery surface with a satisfyingly hefty shove.
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