The Chic Alternative
by David Finlay (26 Sep 05)

This car is not all it seems. Despite its name, and its obvious visual links to the full-size Range Rover, it is in all important matters a Land Rover Discovery - shorter and lower, yes, but built on the same floorpan and with the Discovery's comprehensive off-road system rather than the Range Rover's slightly less advanced version.

It would be reasonable at this point to ask why Land Rover didn't make a Discovery Sport instead. Slightly different styling and a change of badge would have done the job. But the company does not believe that Discovery owners are looking for this kind of car, which is why the Sport has been devised as the "junior" luxury model rather than a spruced-up off-roader.

In its third incarnation, of course, the Discovery is more or less a luxury model in its own right. That's why Land Rover was able, for example, to carry over the interior almost unchanged (though there are detail alterations including a wider centre console). And the Discovery provided a good basis for the Sport's suspension, which has been tuned in such a way as to give astonishingly good ride quality as well as more nimble handling.

Well, "nimble" in comparison with other Land Rover products at least. The Sport may be relatively compact, but on the road you're always conscious that this is an exceptionally heavy car, and that a large proportion of its weight is a long way off the ground. If the car relied on standard springs and dampers this might cause problems, but the Sport uses Land Rover's air suspension with double wishbones and Dynamic Response system. This is also one of the more surprising entries in the list of cars whose chassis development programme included pounding round the Nürburgring Nordschleife, which must have been worth watching.

As a result of all that, the Sport is fairly easy to place, while the considerable amount of body lean does not translate into a change of line requiring steering correction halfway through a bend, as it might otherwise do.

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