Land Rover's next Discovery to head upmarket

The next generation of the popular and multi-award winning Land Rover Discovery will be going upmarket when it arrives here in 2017.

The reshaping of the Disco was confirmed by Jaguar Land Rover Australia managing director Matthew Wiesner at last week’s unveil of the first-ever Jaguar SUV, the F-PACE.

“We love the Discovery and what it is but also quite frankly from an appeal point of view the car hasn’t evolved much for a very long time,” Wiesner told motoring.com.au.

“You will see the next generation will be very much be a Discovery, but you will see it has evolved in a pretty cool way into the next generation and … some of the technology we have got around the place means it will be a pretty good truck.”

An important factor in the Discovery’s push upmarket is to create space for the smaller Discovery Sport launched last year, but also to accommodate a range of new SUVs being added across the JLR portfolio.

Following on from the F-PACE, Jaguar is expected to add the smaller E-PACE, while a larger seven-seat J-PACE has also been mooted. At Land Rover the new Defender is under development and at Range Rover – as we have reported previously — a five-seat SUV could slot in between the Evoque and Range Rover Sport within a couple of years.

“Considering all the other things the company is thinking about from a product point of view then we have to make sure the jigsaw lines up,” Wiesner said.

The fifth-generation Discovery – which is out and about now in Europe testing in disguise – is tipped to have its global unveil at the Paris motor show in September, before being previewed in Australia around this time next year, in the same way the Jaguar XE and F-PACE have been previewed over the last two years.

The Discovery has been on sale in Australia through four generations and three company owners (now India’s Tata) since 1991 and has progressively become a more sophisticated vehicle.

The next Disco is expected to adopt an aluminium intensive architecture that will sheer off hundreds of kilos in weight, incorporate significant new technologies and be restyled to become sleeker and less boxy.

“Discovery will take a more premium space and it’s evolved into what Discovery is in its next life I suppose,” said Wiesner.

“It doesn’t mean we are backing away from what Discovery needs to be. It needs to be absolutely capable off-road. It has a big job to do given what the current car does.

“It will still be a Discovery, it will still do the things a Discovery must have, it will still have the capability, the space, the family orientation.

“But it will also have a broader appeal from a premium point of view because of design and the things the guys are doing really well.”

Wiesner wouldn’t talk about the specifics of JLR’s expansion further into the booming SUV market beyond what has already been publicly confirmed.

But he did make it clear the F-PACE wouldn’t be Jaguar’s sole premium SUV offering for long.

“Look at where the premium market is going and secondly where the SUV part of the premium market is going; the share of that is getting stronger and stronger and stronger.

“We need to make sure over the years we understand exactly what that is going to look like and we need to be ready to move and the guys in the UK are looking at all options.

“The beauty about now having the momentum we have got and the synergies as the platforms and drivetrains become relevant across both brands is we are starting to get some scale.

“Of course then because we have Land Rover and Jaguar but also other derivatives of Land Rover with Range Rover it creates option and that spells a fabulous opportunity to turn that technology into other Jaguar options in time.

“It’s pretty exciting.”