New Disco Sport gets posh new diesels

Land Rover has announced its new Discovery Sport is now available with the firm's new range of Ingenium diesel engines.

That's right, a brand new car will get a brand new engine. Quite why Land Rover didn't offer the Discovery Sport from launch with its newest engines remains a little unclear. But, whatever the reason, LR has now ditched the Disco Sport's 2.2-litre, 187bhp diesel engine - which emits 162g/km of CO2 and returns around 46mpg - and replaced it with the box-fresh aluminium 2.0-litre four-pot, in two guises.

There's a 148bhp version that'll return 57.7mpg and emit 129g/km of CO2, and a higher-powered 178bhp version, offering an official 53.3mpg and 139g/km.

The new aluminium diesel is based on JLR's flexible engine architecture, featuring stiffer cylinder blocks, decoupled injectors and promising lower levels of noise, vibration and all the other nasty things diesels are notorious for. There's even a low-pressure exhaust gas recirculation system to reduce NOx emissions and CO2.

And, don't forget, these are the same engines Jaguar is using for the brand new XE saloon, built in a new £500 million engine factory in the West Midlands with a capacity potential of 450,000 Ingenium engines per year.

Every Ingenium block will share the same bore, stroke, cylinder spacing and 500cc cylinder capacity. The modular 500cc cylinder capacity, says JLR, gives Ingenium ‘the flexibility around which smaller or larger engines can quickly be developed'. Which means the architecture can be scaled up or down - a three-cylinder 1.5-litre seems a probability, while six or even eight-cylinder configurations are possible. All Ingenium engines will be capable of incorporating hybrid technology.

For now, though it's all about the four-cylinder diesels. Prices for the Ingenium-engined Disco Sports start at £30,695 - that gets you the entry-level version complete with low rolling resistance tyres - and you'll be able to order it now, ready for a September 2015 delivery. Now that the Disco Sport has got the engine it always deserved, would it tempt you over similar offerings from BMW and Audi?