Land Rover Discovery Sport to wildest Scotland

Britain is full. We know this is true, for Nigel Farage says it is so, and Nigel Farage is not a man given to tub-thumping hyperbole. Stuffed to the rafters, we are, says Nige, every inch of our glorious green isle jam-packed with dole-claiming, benefit-scrounging humans. Can't exit your front door without tripping over a dozen migrants. Shut the borders; we're brimmed.

Now, far be it from me to question the claims of our treasured right-wing politicians, but I can't help thinking Big Nige and his ilk might be wrong. Because we've just bumbled to a halt in front of a stone bothy somewhere deep in Scotland's Cairngorm Mountains - a region, as of the last referendum, still very much part of Britain - and, right now, Britain doesn't look especially full at all. In fact, right now, Britain looks decidedly - what's the word? - empty. Vacant. Deserted.

Pictures: Justin Leighton

This feature was originally published in the February 2015 issue of Top Gear Magazine.

In every direction lies glorious nothing. No sign of a village or telegraph pole or road. No evidence of human habitation of any kind, save our Discovery Sport and the bothy, of which we - semi-feral photographer Justin, a man born for a primal mountain existence if ever there was one - are very much the only inhabitants. Just hills and heather and the last weak fingers of a December sun sinking heavy into a still sky. We haven't seen another car or human in two hours, since we swung off the tarmac somewhere near Pitlochry and began wending our way up a rutted, stony dirt track high into the hills, bumping over tumbling streams, inching our way down scree slopes and fording rivers to arrive, eventually, at this spot, so distant from civilisation that it makes The Shining's Overlook Hotel seem virtually suburban. Accept it, Nige: Britain's not full. You just need to find the empty bits.

And have the means to get there. I'll be honest, I didn't expect the Discovery Sport to make it here, at least not with bumpers attached. After all, this is an upmarket SUV riding on big alloys: replacement for the Freelander, but posher and (in LR design boss Gerry McGovern's own words) "more urban".

Not to mention more, um, seaty. The Discovery Sport, though only 9cm longer than that departing Freelander, packs no fewer than seven seats: the conventional five, plus a pair of evening-and-weekend items that flat-fold neatly in the back. Put it this way: you wouldn't want to be stuck back there for a two-hour crawl over a Scottish mountain, but for a jaunt across town they'd do, even for mid-size adults.

It's an impressive feat of packaging. Land Rover has cheated that extra space in the back by ditching the Freelander's MacPherson rear suspension in favour of a posh new multilink set-up, a design it reckons not only yields more room, but better manners on- and off-road. They're not kidding about the off-road bit. Well, we're here, aren't we?

What a spot. Bar the gurgling of a brook carrying frosty, clear meltwater, all is silent. As a million stars start to shimmer above, a snow-white mountain hare pops up from behind a tussock, eyes beady black against the purple-brown heather. It feels a profound moment, a primal, timeless pause in an age of 24-hour connectivity and Snapchatting and whatever else it is the kids get up to nowadays. We sit in silence for a couple of moments - hare watching humans, humans watching hare - and then Justin clears his throat. "Told you I should've brought my gun," he says. Pretty sure he's joking.

My trigger-happy colleague raises an important point. I hadn't really considered the necessity of, y'know, eating out here. Well, you always assume there'll be a convenience store within walking distance, don't you? But in the time it takes me to fiddle with the Discovery Sport's automatic tailgate and somehow get my arm trapped in a roll mat, Justin has started a blaze in the bothy's fireplace, lit half a dozen kerosene lamps, and produced, from somewhere, a couple of pouches of sausage'n' beans. This is, thankfully, not a euphemism.

The bothy (a traditional Scottish word meaning, of course, ‘like a both') warms up quickly, a rugged little survival capsule in a cold Scottish night. Bothies, to the uninitiated, are wee huts dotted throughout Scotland's parks and mountain ranges providing (some) shelter and (marginal) warmth for the walkers that pass. This one, while unlikely to gain many AA stars, is veritably boutique by bothy standards. There's a picnic table outside; a box of teabags and a couple of benches inside. The only thing missing, in fact, is a cupboard of good Scotch and a library. And then, at 11pm, the firewood runs out. The temperature outside is at -5°C and still dropping. I realise my £10 festival-spec sleeping bag is woefully unfit for Cairngorm duty, and decide, shiveringly, to make the two-hour trek back down the mountain in search of a warm bed for the night. Wilderness is great an' all, but central heating's better. Justin, protected from the chill by a vast coat and equally vast beard, chooses to embrace his inner Shackleton and stick it out in the bothy...

Winding up the track (again) at dawn the next day, it's clear the night was a cold one. Frost is painted thick over the mountains, streams frozen solid across the path. I try to figure a plan of action if I encounter a deep-frozen, perished husk of a photographer in the bothy (remove memory cards from camera, leave for next walkers to deal with?). But I arrive at Chez Leighton to discover Justin taking a bracing dip in the icy river outside the bothy, emitting a range of falsetto sounds as a herd of red deer watch on inquisitively. Some of us are built for the wild. Some of us are not.

Bothy swept, spare sachet of sausage 'n' beans hung by the fire for the next travellers to pass this way, we head down the mountain on a track that makes the morning's approach route look like the M25. Knee-deep bogs, one-in-one slick-mud slopes, razor-edged rock crawls. The little Land Rover manages the lot with something resembling disdain.

I've always been wary of Off-Road Enthusiasts (you know the sort: wellies, winches, over-confident handshakes) and their obsession with ‘overhangs', but the Disco Sport proves they might just have a point. The Sport has an almost implausible ability to haul itself in and out of steep divots without grounding either nose or tail. Arguably as much as clever 4WD gubbinry or knobbly tyres, it's overhangs that dictate where, exactly, you can stick your 4x4, and where you can't. Shoving the Disco Sport's wheels to its very corners isn't only good news for interior space, but for mud-plugging too.

On the subject of clever 4WD gubbinry, yes, the Discovery Sport has it. Though you'll soon be able to buy a FWD version, ours is a proper all-paw: a Haldex centre differential and LR's full range of traction-sniffing software. OK, it's not quite going to get you everywhere a Defender might reach, but it'll come pretty damn close. Each time I think the little Disco has been finally defeated by a particularly slippery rock climb or slick mud slope, somehow it finagles a little more grip from one of its wheels, nibbling up the hill with the dogged resistance of a pack-pony.

I know the vast, vast majority of Discovery Sports will attempt off-roading no more tricky than a brushed-gravel car park or grassy verge, and thus you could accuse it of being over-engineered for duty. But here's the point. Everything you buy - at least, everything you buy that doesn't shatter within a year of purchase - is over-engineered for duty. That's the point in engineering. Skyscrapers are engineered to withstand significantly more than the forces they're likely to encounter in the course of their skyscraping lifetime. If they didn't, they might just fall down in the event of, y'know, a nasty storm, or a fat lad getting in the wrong lift. So don't get upset about the Discovery Sport being designed to withstand rather more than it's likely to encounter in the normal course of events. It'd only be a bad thing if it came at the detriment of other abilities, and - in this case at least - it doesn't. Back onto the tarmac, and the Disco proves itself as utterly competent on road as it is off. Better than competent, in fact. It manages that Range Rover trick of feeling somehow more... organic than the oft-clunky German competition, comfortable companion for a long-distance cruise but taut enough to enjoy being punted through a few corners. The steering is sharp, there's no tall-car wallow. The Disco Sport, in fact, feels very much slightly-bigger-brother to the Evoque - unsurprising, really, as it shares much of its skeleton with the littlest Range Rover.

And its launch engine. The Discovery Sport launches with just one powertrain option (in the UK, at least): Land Rover's familiar 2.2-litre turbodiesel four-pot. It is, as sensible diesel engines go, largely inoffensive, a pleasing slug of mid-range torque propelling the DS along at a decent lick. But, compared to Germany's best, the diesel is chuntery when started up in the cold, while vital statistics of 44.8mpg and 166g/km of CO2 aren't going to set Al Gore on his patented Happy Dance.

Salvation is close at hand. Later this year, the Discovery Sport will receive JLR's new swathe of modular engines, dubbed Ingenium. This will bring with it a 2.0-litre turbodiesel that Land Rover reckons should stick it to BMW, Audi and Merc in both the performance and economy stakes. A pity Land Rover couldn't have launched its shiny new engine range with its shiny new SUV, but it seems Jaguar won that particular internal wrangle for its XE saloon. We're told Land Rover dealers are already taking orders for Ingenium-engined Discovery Sports: until we've tested the new engines to see if they live up to their promise, we can't tell you whether that's a smart move, but we suspect it's worth hanging on. At least the optional 9spd ZF auto 'box - the Discovery Sport gets a 6spd manual as standard - remains beyond reproach. Unlike its allegedly top-spec infotainment system, borrowed wholesale from the current Range Rover and looking decidedly last-gen against the latest, cleverest offerings from that pesky Teutonic trio. We're told the baser infotainment set-up boasts swisher graphics. Go figure.

It's a reminder that potential Disco Sport owners should tread safe with the options list. Because it can get very expensive, very quickly. Prices for the 4WD Discovery Sport start at a smidge over £32k (the soon-to-arrive FWD version will be a little cheaper), which is pretty mid-table money for a smart SUV with proper off-road ability. But the car you see on these pages groans under an all-in price tag of - ready for this? - £48,000. You could build a luxury bothy for less. Of course, Land Rover's German rivals give you equal opportunity to spec your small 4x4 into big limo price territory, but still: a budget family runabout this is not.

All of which might make us sound a little lukewarm on the Disco Sport. But truly, I'm rather taken by it. Optioned wisely, with the new Ingenium diesel, this will be, I suspect, a rather lovely thing: an SUV that hits all parts of the SUV brief, that's as comfortable off-road as on. A car to spirit you far from the beaten track, to the corners of Britain that prove plenty of Britain is still empty.

We roll into Edinburgh with night falling - all the traffic and noise and shortbread faintly shocking after the grand emptiness of the Cairngorms - and toddle to a muddy stop in front of a posh city-centre hotel. An immaculately pressed doorman - tartan kilt and all - scurries over to help with our luggage. I open the Sport's boot to apologetically reveal a cacophony of muddy sleeping bags, camp stoves and gas lamps, all infused with the unmistakable odour of kerosene and animal dung. The doorman, all credit to him, doesn't so much as flinch. "Load me up, sir," he grins, holding out an arm. "'D'ye have a reservation? Everywhere's completely full right now..."

Not everywhere, Nige. Not everywhere.