Land Rover Discovery review

Pleasant as the P360 petrol is, it’s going to do 250 miles to a tank while the diesel returns closer to 500 miles. And that alone is enough to swing us towards the D300. Land Rover claims 26mpg and 33mpg respectively, while the D300 claims 218g/km to the P360’s 238g/km.

Because the 2.0-litre twins need to be worked so much harder to move the Disco’s bulk and they do without 48-volt assist for coasting and turbo spooling, they’re barely any more efficient on paper and in our experience don’t suit the car in day-to-day use, particularly in regard to refinement. They add back in a sense of the agricultural that’s largely been banished from this fifth-gen offering.

At present there are merely two main choices of trim (if you disregard the Discovery commercial which swaps all semblance of back seats for a van-spec load bay and is only available with the D300 engine).

Prices for the seven-seat civilian version kick off at just over £53,000, with the more assertive R-Dynamic coming in at £55,440. This adds a load of darkened trim, but still rides on 20s as standard like the regular Discovery S.

All versions get leather seats, Apple and Android mirroring, surround camera view with a fleet of driver aids, powered tailgate, all LED lights, and adaptive air suspension that’ll squat down for loading heavy items (and elderly dogs) or to cut drag above 65mph, and stand up on tiptoes for serious off-roading.

We ran a long-termer at Top Gear magazine and found the connectivity to be a major bugbear, with incessant touchscreen crashes and phone pairing frustration. Here’s hoping the new standard ‘Pivi’ interface cures those woes for good – a £50k luxury SUV needs to be getting the tech basics right by now, even if it’ll conquer the Sahara or Outback in a weekend.