Land Rover Discovery Sport

Overview

What is it?

More than five years after launch, the Discovery Sport remains Land Rover’s best-selling car. So, it’s perhaps no surprise that its mid-life refresh in 2019 saw the exterior remain largely the same, with some fancier LED lights and retrimmed bumpers about the sum of its aesthetic evolution. Regular facelift fare.

What isn’t regular facelift fare is completely changing the architecture beneath your car, but that’s what Land Rover did. This is a facelift that was three years in the making, with similar underpinnings to the new Range Rover Evoque slotted beneath a rather familiar looking body.

Why did Land Rover go to so much trouble?

Electricity, the answer to most automotive questions these days. This all-new platform is shaped to swallow batteries and motors, and thus the Disco Sport is offered with a bunch of mild-hybrid engines and a plug-in hybrid powertrain. You’d assume a full EV is something they’re planning for, too.

Only one of the Sport’s current range of engines needs plugging in: the P300e teams a 1.5-litre 3cyl petrol engine with an electric motor for 34 miles of range. On the mild hybrid models, the electrical assistance shaves off a bit of fuel consumption and CO2 expulsion here and there, while cutting the effects of lag from the various turbocharged engines it’s strapped to.

What if I don’t want a Disco Sport with a plug?

All the non-plug-in engines are 2.0 litres in size, most operating through an eight-speed automatic gearbox, with two diesels (161 and 201bhp) and three petrols (197, 246 and 286bhp). Only the entry-level D165 misses out on mild-hybrid tech, and represents the tempting £32k entry point to Land Rover ownership. You’ll be spending well into the forties (perhaps fifties) if you want a bigger engine and tastier styling, though.

As before, it’s described as a 5+2 seater; in plain English, it’s optionally a seven-seat car with minimal boot space when you deploy its child-sized rear chairs. But for an SUV of its footprint – 4.6m long, 1.9m wide, the same as a Ford Focus Estate – that’s an impressive amount of flexibility which’ll go down a treat on that cliched school run. Though it’s worth swiftly pointing out that the P300e is exclusively a five-seater.

What else is new?

The update has also brought bigger cubby holes, more charging ports, cupholders for rearmost passengers and a plethora of technology for those up front. The rear-view mirror now (optionally) relays a camera feed – to double your field of vision behind – while there’s Android Auto and Apple CarPlay housed within Jaguar Land Rover’s latest widescreen media setup.

Not to mention a vast array of off-road gubbins. Before you argue they’re a little wasted, then some of it will actually prove useful away from those hypothetical green lanes. Namely ‘Ground View’, which relays yet more camera feeds to effectively let you see through the bonnet to beneath the car. It’s sold as a rock-crawling aid, but back here in the real world, width restrictors have suddenly become a lot less stressful…

What appears a light evolution of Land Rover’s bestseller is actually a bit of a tech revolution, with some properly functioning media systems up front and more forward-thinking architecture beneath.

For now, the mild-hybrid tech really is mild, and you’ll likely plump for the best diesel you can afford and barely notice the little nibbles of electric power that help smooth out the driving process. The PHEV is a nice addition to the range, but losing the seven-seat option means it loses one of this car’s USPs, too.

But they very much do, helping keep this car right at the top of the class if it’s comfort and relaxation you’re after. Niggling doubts about reliability – from past, first-hand experience of the Sport – and its conservative performance are the only things stopping us from awarding it a higher mark. This is posh family transport at its most pleasingly practical.

Top Gear’s experience of living with a Land Rover Discovery Sport

Driving

What is it like to drive?

With such a small footprint, the Discovery Sport drives incredibly neatly for a seven-seat SUV, and while it never shrugs off its weight – near two tonnes – it tucks neatly into corners and even exhibits something resembling ‘steering feel’. Remember that stuff?

But while it’s sporty by name, it’s less so by nature; the pervading feeling is of a car geared towards comfort, and its latest engines are eerily quiet compared to those fitted to the car back upon launch in 2014. This is especially true of the petrol, which cruises as good as silently at motorway speeds.

Which engine is best?

With only four-cylinder engines on offer (or three cylinders on the plug-in hybrid) this is not a car with a surfeit of power, even without the full platoon of kids on board. We’d suggest getting the punchiest diesel you can afford if you want acceleration to feel effortless.

The automatic feels best suited to the diesel, too. It’s never keen to kickdown, even when you properly give the throttle some welly – we suspect WLTP regulations are to blame for some very punctilious gearbox software – so having plentiful low-down torque on offer is vital if you’re to get those two tonnes moving swiftly.

What about the plug-in hybrid?

The P300e – as it’s called – is actually the most powerful Disco Sport of all, with 305bhp when both petrol and electricity combine at their max. But you’d be foolish to aim for that output away from urgent overtakes – partly for the slightly raucous engine note, but mostly for the detrimental effect it’ll have on economy. If you’re working the car hard (without plugging in between journeys) you’ll hit the same mid-30s mpg as any other Disco Sport. There’s a lot to be said for the smug satisfaction of rolling around silently in something so chunky, though.

All told, every Disco quickly convinces you to settle into a relaxed pace, where JLR’s consistent knack of nailing a car’s damping (at least if you keep wheel sizes sensible) makes this perhaps the best car to drive in its class. Not the sportiest, but the comfiest, which is much more relevant if we’re all honest with each other. Its resemblance to a full-strength Range Rover is uncanny and surely welcome when you’ve a gaggle of small people to keep calm in the back.

Dare I ask about off roading?

Off road it also reigns supreme, for what it’s worth. Whether you deploy its numerous rock-crawling and hill-descending systems or trust your own ham-fistedness, this is a car that’ll take a serious bashing without complaint, even wading through 600mm of water. Most buyers won’t do any of it, we suspect, but then how many chronograph owners ever dive to their watch’s water resistance levels? The simple knowledge of its inherent capability will be enough to lift a Landie above less illustrious SUV rivals in the eyes of many.

Interior

What is it like on the inside?

Seven seats is rare in a car this size, and as you’d expect, there’s minimal room for luggage with the rear two deployed. And they’ll only fit adults or fully sprouted teenagers over shorter distances. But there are dozens of formations available as you flip and fold each chair, with almost 1,800 litres of storage space on offer.

What about tech?

When this car was launched it included JLR’s ‘Touch Pro’ media system, but this has since been replaced by the company’s Pivi system. Pivi and Pivo Pro are designed to simplify all the touchscreen menus, and over-the-air updates should lead to more improvements and features further down the line. Phew.

The driver gets the best collection of gadgets, though, with a 12in TFT dial display ahead. It’s much like the Virtual Cockpit pioneered by Audi all those years ago, and works in a similar fashion with the ability to stretch the map over the entire width of the screen if you find that more informative than an old-fashioned rev counter.

There’s a head-up display on offer, too, though it lacks the clarity of rivals’ equivalents. More of a USP is its optional rear-view mirror trickery. Just like the new Evoque’s, it flips to a widescreen camera view of the road behind at the flick of a switch. It takes a little while to get used to and is a little disorientating after years of adjusting your view behind by shifting your head around.

And when I get accustomed it?

You’ll revel in just how much of the road behind you can see. Because the camera lens is fixed, there’s no need to adjust the mirror position when drivers of different heights use the car, which might just shave another few seconds off getting the car packed and off the driveway every day. It also means you can stack the boot right up and not have your rearward vision suffer. Helpful if you’ve stuffed taller people into those back seats, too.

Will it all work in five years?

A great question, for the one caveat to all this excitement is our past experience of JLR products – including the previous-gen Discovery Sport we ran at Top Gear – which all suffered screen-based maladies at one point or another. So while we hope and trust all of these systems will work throughout the life of the car, we’ll reserve a little caution when bigging them up.

Oh, and the Sport also comes with a layer of artificial intelligence that will, in time, learn your music, climate control and seat massage preferences, setting the car up for you each time you drive. Spooky…

Buying

What should I be paying?

There’s lots about the Discovery Sport to make life easy, especially when it comes to carrying multiple people or towing big stuff. It’ll cart around 2,500kg of bikes/cars/horses and trailer assist systems will make parking it all a doddle.

Ignore the mild-hybrid talk, as for now the tech all beavers away beneath the surface and won’t affect you day-to-day, save for some light fuel savings. The most fuel-efficient Sport actually goes without it, that entry-level diesel manual claiming a mighty 47.8mpg, though that’s massively aided by ditching four-wheel drive.

The D165 is also the supreme bargain of the Disco Sport range, starting at a whisker over £32,000, with the 5+2 seating adding another grand. But a cautious step through the specs will easily throw you well into the 40s and a plumply specced example with power levels appropriate for hauling stuff around can be fifty grand with ease. But the truth is the Disco Sport feels worth it. Good.

The plug-in hybrid offers a compelling case for switching from a conventional diesel Disco. On paper it can do 143mpg and CO2 emissions of 44g/km will appeal to company car folk, but in reality it’ll be circa 50mpg if you’re doing decent distances with semi-frequent charging, or mid-30s if charging proves a total faff and you mainly just fill up with petrol and give its 15kWh battery a free ride wherever you go. A battery which fills the hole in the boot other Discos can squeeze a pair of flip-out seats into.

Keyword: Land Rover Discovery Sport