| Launch Report Land Rover Discovery |
||
 |
||
|
It’s also worth mentioning the electronic sequential option on that auto box. This works very well and gives you a bit more involvement in the driving, but the lever is placed rather far back for macho, straight-arm changes and, being electronic, it also feels a bit remote; so I found I ignored it most of the time. As for trim levels, there are four, ranging from a basic unlabeled five-seat diesel model with coil-spring suspension and a manual box, up through S and SE in traditional Land Rover fashion, to the crème de la mud, the HSE. All except the base models have seven seats and the feature around which the Discovery 3 concept orbits - the Terrain Response system.
On the road it seems to shrink the big car when it comes to cornering and braking. Hard and fast manoeuvres can be executed cleanly and with confidence, long curves and tighter bends produce only minor body roll, and yet it remained pliant over the humps, bumps, jumps and yumps of back-road rural Scotland. Where it shone, though, was in the rough. I took automatic versions of both engines through some potentially very frightening situations that you frankly wouldn’t touch without technical back-up and the encouragement of very experienced instructors. Not even then, if the vehicle was your own property. Both cars behaved impeccably and appeared to defy the laws of physics on numerous occasions. A bit of gentle moorland tramlining though peaty ruts and wheel arch-deep water broke us in gently for what was to come.
It was genuinely amazing for an experienced hack like myself to think this thing could do twice the national speed limit on the road and yet negotiate such extreme ground. The other big selling point on the Discovery 3 will be the flexible seating system which, even in a world full of such things, is genuinely clever and effective. All three in the second row of seats can be folded independently in two to leave a table top, or tumbled forward out of the way completely. They can also be pushed down into the floor if you wish to leave a completely flat and frankly cavernous cargo hold. |
Terrain Response is what Land Rover believes makes the car the ultimate multi-discipline vehicle. It uses a whole rake of sensors and computer programmes to set the beast up for whatever the world has in store for it, whether that’s a thousand miles of motorway or a boulder-strewn mountain stream bed. So far as the driver’s concerned, all he or she needs do is what engineers call “turning the knob”.
