PARIS MOTOR SHOW: Land Rover Discovery 5 sheds almost 500kg

This is the car Land Rover says will take Discovery up-market. With more space, more equipment and more refinement, it might wear the Land Rover badge but it presents better than any Range Rover did just a few short years ago.

And the marque has big plans for it.

In the 27 years since Land Rover launched its original Discovery three-door, more than 1.2 million buyers have piled into the versatile off-roader. Few, if any of them, ever physically piled into the third row of seats offered by the latest generations of the Brit-built SUV, but that might change.

While most sixth and seventh seats are supplementary devices that usually take home the spare kids that turn up after footy and netball training (or serve as stop-gaps for Brady Bunch families), Land Rover claims the fifth-generation Discovery’s third row will easily cater for adults.

It’s been engineered and designed to fit 95th percentile adult males.

What’s more, its new third-row seating system can be remotely configured by an application on a smartphone (or via the multimedia screen or physically at the seats themselves), so there will be no more clambering into the luggage compartment or cursing in the rain to get it all organised. And all seven seats can be heated.

While you might find it odd that we’ve attacked the all-new, aluminium-chassised Discovery from the back seats first, but that's to highlight that Land Rover believes practicality -- as much as engineering -- will be what keeps the Disco prosperous.

That’s especially true in a world with threats from everybody from Audi and BMW to Mercedes-Benz, Lexus and now stablemate Jaguar.

Land Rover claims it’s revolutionising the Discovery’s nameplate, but that’s probably a stretch for a 2017 production car that was actually previewed with the Discovery Vision Concept car at the New York motor show in 2014.

“The new Discovery redefines the large SUV,” said Land Rover’s Chief Design Officer, Gerry McGovern.

“Land Rover’s design and engineering teams have revolutionised the Discovery DNA to create a highly desirable, extremely versatile and hugely capable premium SUV.

“We truly believe the result is a radical departure in design that will introduce the Discovery to a new, wider customer base.”

Just because McGovern sounds immodest doesn’t mean he’s not right.

For example, it does all of this rear-seat trickery in a large SUV that finds a way to still sneak beneath five metres in length (albeit by a scant 30mm), while slashing almost 480kg of mass out of the equivalently engineered steel-chassis Disco 4.

While Land Rover is making us wait for precise details, it’s worth noting that the petrol-powered Jaguar F-PACE, which emerged from the same engineering stable as the new Discovery, chimes in at around 1800kg, or about the same as a premium mid-size station wagon.

The new Discovery 5 keeps traditional styling features, like its (now modestly) stepped roof that gives more headroom to those in the back and helps it deliver stadium-style seating, with each row sitting higher than the one in front of it (not snapping shut whenever you stand up).

Don’t believe that any of this necessarily reflects a shift away from the Disco’s off-road capability, either. It’s just recognises the realities of life with a modern SUVs.

For example, the Discovery 5 can now wade through a stunning 900mm of water, which is 200mm more than the outgoing series was engineered to manage without drowning expensively.

The heart of its off-road ability is managed by Land Rover’s Terrain Response 2 system, which is either switchable from a rotary controller or can be left to operate automatically, working out what the car needs from its sensor inputs.

Its ground clearance has gone up 40mm from 243mm to 283mm with standard wheels and tyres, yet Land Rover has fitted it with a system that drops the car’s body back down by that exact same 40mm when it works out people are getting in or out of it. All gain, no pain.

There's also a key built into a waterproof wristband, almost identical to the one Jaguar debuted in the F-PACE. You can wear it to surf or swim or run or cycle or any of a thousand other things while you leave the primary key in the car. That’s because when you hold the Activity Key wristband (as Land Rover’s calling it) up to the letter 'D' in the Discovery’s tailgate badge, it not only locks the car but also deactivates the main key until you return.

While Land Rover doesn’t crow about its powertrains and has yet to release the full raft of dimensions and technical details, it will be available with supercharged petrol and turbocharged diesel six-cylinder engines.

The petrol-powered Si6 3.0-litre V6 will deliver 250kW and 450Nm, but the turbo-diesel will almost certainly be the biggest seller everywhere except North America. The Td6 3.0-litre six-cylinder motor will be highlighted by 600Nm. And 190kW awaits those who prefer to keep revving their oil-squashers.

Neither engine is particularly stressed in Discovery trim, because the same core petrol engine in the F-PACE sister car delivers 280kW of power and 450Nm of torque, while the Jaguar diesel has 221kW/700Nm.

Both versions of the Discovery will use constant all-wheel drive, connected to the engines via ZF eight-speed automatic transmissions.

The Discovery 5 can tow up to 3500kg in a trailer or van, plus it uses semi-autonomous reversing technology to make it easier to tow and park. The driver just needs to aim it on the reversing camera and the car’s computing power will take care of the steering and the counter-steering needed to reverse park a trailer.

But it’s the interior and what that means for families that’s been the focus of Land Rover’s attentions.

Every one of the five seats in the second and third rows are fitted with Isofix mounting points, for example, and it can be ordered with nine (nine!) USB ports, six 12-volt chargers and a centre console that can hold either two 2.0-litre bottles or four iPads... The whole car meantime is a rolling 3G wifi hotspot.

While many of the car’s functions can be accessed via a smartphone app, almost everything can be operated by the 10-inch touch-screen multimedia display mounted high on the dashboard, including the 14-speaker sound system.

The Disco can swallow 1231 litres of luggage but that bumps up to 2500 litres (which seems a suspiciously neat figure) with the second and third seating rows folded flat.

The tailgate remains a single-piece unit, there’s now an electronically operated “inner tailgate” at the rear-most edge of the luggage compartment. Besides acting as a de facto cargo screen, the 285mm high panel can also be lowered to serve as a seat or a changing bench beneath the shelter of the tailgate. McGovern insists it delivers all the practicality of a two-piece tailgate without the complications.

That’s not it for storage, though, with plenty of other odd cubby holes and pieces of cleverness throughout the cabin. One example is that the cover for the centre console doubles as an armrest and can hinge 180 degrees so it can still be used as an armrest when the cubby hole is open.

There’s also a small secretive storage space hidden behind the climate-control’s fold-down panel, plus the curry hook in the front passenger’s footwell is now flush with the rest of the footwell’s molding.