New Age Of Discovery

LAND ROVER HAS BUILT A DISCOVERY THAT’S NEW FROM THE GROUND UP, BUT IS IT BETTER FOR THE CHANGE?

- Fraser Stronach

WHAT you see here is only the third new from-the-ground-up Discovery in nearly 30 years and one that shares very little with its forebears. Most significantly it’s a monocoque design whereas all previous Discoveries since the original debuted in 1988 have used a separate chassis, which is the traditional – some would say old-school – way to build a 4x4. However, this new Discovery is not just any monocoque but one fabricated largely from aluminium – 85 per cent, in fact – rather than steel. This makes it significantly lighter than the previous Discovery and brings wide-ranging benefits.

Land Rover isn’t new to building monocoque 4x4s, as the marque’s first appeared in 2002 in the form of the then-new third-generation Range Rover. This Discovery has been developed from the current Range Rover and Range Rover Sport, which debuted essentially the same aluminium monocoque platform in 2012. So while all this may be new to the Discovery, it’s certainly not new to Land Rover.

POWERTRAIN AND PERFORMANCE

This new-generation Discovery comes with three new diesel engines in Australia. What we have here is the Td6 – a 3.0-litre V6 and the premium engine in the Australian range – and two 2.0-litre fours. The V6 is available in all model grades and has been developed from the V6 diesel in the previous Discovery, but it drops the bi-turbo system for a simpler single turbo and introduces a new injection system and Euro 6 compliance, among other changes. Despite reverting to a single turbo, it claims 7kW more power (now 190kW) than the outgoing SDV6 – the more powerful of the two V6s in the previous Discovery – while its maximum torque of 600Nm comes on earlier than it did in the SDV6.