13 Things I Learned About The Land Rover Discovery On A Crazy 1000-Mile European Road Trip

1. The Discovery looks awesome in this luxury spec

Our car came in HSE Luxury spec, which has a base price of £59,970. For that hefty lump of dosh, you get (amongst a great many other things) adaptive xenon headlamps and daytime running lights with a gorgeously distinctive light signature, vast swathes of leather on everything you might touch, and a perforated leather steering wheel that’ll warm your hands when it’s chilly. Which it was. All weekend.

Those huge 20-inch alloy wheels are also standard, however our car had the £800 Black Design Pack, which painted those wheels black. It also gave us a black Discovery badge on the boot, black door handles, black door mirrors… basically lots of black things.

For me, the Firenze Red paintwork was the highlight; it looks absolutely fantastic in the metal, giving off a deep, rich appearance, working well with the black pack to give off an air of assured sophistication. Shame about the rear light design, though. It looks like an aftermarket take on the old Lexus lights.

2. Rear seat entertainment is top notch

Another piece of standard equipment on the HSE Luxury trim is a pair of televisions for rear seat passengers. They come with a remote control and a pair of headphones, which is great because it means those in the front don’t have to listen to what the kids (or in our case, immature adults) are watching in the back.

Once we got it working, we couldn’t fault it, with signal quality being surprisingly good. The only downside is that it took a lot of button pressing and trial and error to get it going. Being men, we don’t read the instructions, so it needs to be fairly intuitive…

3. The sound system is mega

The 825W Meridian Surround System is an absolute must have for audiophiles. It’s not the best high end system I’ve experienced; picking out individual instruments within songs isn’t always as easy as in other expensive speaker kits, but it really adds a lot to the audio experience compared to the standard sound system - no matter how loud we turned up the music, there was no discernible distortion.

4. The driving position is odd, but surprisingly comfortable

I very rarely drive larger vehicles like this, so I’m used to being tucked into smaller cabins with my legs stretched out in front of me. In the Disco, you sit upright as if you’re in an armchair, with your legs bent and the pedals beneath you. It feels a bit odd at first, but once I’d given the seat a bit of a recline, I grew to rather like it.

At the push of a button, you can raise or lower the Discovery’s ride height. It’s great fun, especially when you raise it to its highest setting, giving the car a comical stance. When dropped to its ‘Access’ setting, which makes it easier for people to climb in and out, the wheels tuck nicely into the arches - its not #hellaflush, obviously, but it looks cool. And for those of us who are easily pleased, flicking the ride height up and down provides endless fun.

6. Its performance and efficiency is surprisingly similar to a Mazda MX-5

Alex’s Mazda MX-5 makes approximately 129.4bhp at the crank, and weighs as much as a shoe. The Discovery has 252bhp and weighs in at a whopping 2.5 tonnes before four people and a weekend’s worth of equipment is thrown on board.

The plucky Mazda is more sprightly off the line, but the impressive torque available from the diesel V6 means that in gear performance is near-identical. Interestingly, both cars also managed to achieve a little over 30mpg over the three days.

7. It's an absolute blast in the curves (no, really)

Okay, so a car that weighs as much as a house and has a ride height better measured in metres than millimetres is never going to be agile, but I actually really enjoyed chucking the car around the awesome roads in the vicinity of the Nurburgring.

Following the CTMeet, Alex (in the MX-5) and John (in his BMW E46 M3) blasted off ahead, so I did my very best to keep up. Once I got in tune with the way the body rolls like a ship in a storm, I was able to tune into the movements to keep things smooth. Naturally it was an unruly beast in tighter corners, but in the longer sweepers it was great fun hustling along with the wheels squealing in distress.

Two CTzens following us in an Audi S3 later said they were laughing the whole time, watching the Disco lollop from side to side - I really wish there was video evidence of just how much roll you can induce!

8. The sat nav is a little bit rubbish

You can probably dive into the settings to change the type of route the sat nav takes you on, but the default setting likes to take you away from motorways. Upon leaving my house and heading to the Channel Tunnel, it tried to take us across London’s clogged streets instead of sending us straight out on to the M25, London’s motorway ring road.

When we left the Nurburgring, it took us cross country, so we didn’t get any autobahn blasts before leaving Germany. It’s a bit annoying when you’ve had a long, tiring weekend and have to spend the first half of your journey home crawling along country lanes with local traffic.

9. Off-roading is effortless

Thanks to the sat nav (and kind of because I didn’t realise German post codes aren’t as specific as UK ones) we ended up in the middle of nowhere in a complex of small holiday homes. As we aimlessly cruised along the dirt tracks between the quaint cottages, we ended up at the end of a track facing up an incredibly steep hill.

As Alex slowly reversed back down the hill in the darkness, I simply put the Disco into Drive, and drove up the wet grass and back towards the road. It was raining hard, the grass was muddy and soaked, and I wasn’t even in a dedicated off road mode, yet the Disco just cruised up the hill like it was nothing.

It got filthy, mind, and needed a good hosing down for the meet!

10. The boot has so much room for activities (and equipment, and even two people)

Thanks to the fact the MX-5 has a boot big enough for nought more than a few t-shirts, the Disco was essentially a support vehicle on top of transporting four people and their bags for a three day trip. It soaked up everything with ease, and even with an extra person for the return journey, there was plenty of space for things.

11. But there's uncomfortably little leg room for passengers

Unfortunately, the space for things was at the expense of space for humans. Rear leg room is comically minimal, and Gabor’s legs were wedged up against the dashboard to allow Edwin’s legs to fit behind him. The Discovery looks huge, but there’s hardly any room for passengers, which was a great source of frustration on such a long trip.

12. It's an effortless mile muncher

That being said, from the driver’s seat, the Discovery ate up the miles without the faintest hint of a complaint. The driving position was decent, the cruise control worked flawlessly, and the surge of torque constantly being available makes barging through traffic a delight.

13. But I'd still rather have a saloon

That being said, if I had to do the trip again, I’d pick a large saloon all day long. If we’re sticking with JLR, the XF would’ve been perfect. While the Discovery did a great job, I didn’t like the fact that the centre of gravity was so high; it just felt so tall and ungainly.

Perhaps it’s just familiarity, but I prefer being lower down with legs stretched out before you, and I’m confident we’d still have managed to fit all that equipment in an XF’s boot. Furthermore, while I did enjoy chucking the Disco around, it would’ve been nice to be able to drive quickly without the constant feeling you’re about to tip over…