I tried one yesterday, a diesel automatic.. I had previously only seen pictures of the Discovery 3 (as the brochure calls it) and thought it looked bulky and a bit ugly. Well, I found it blends in so well that when I got to the dealers I didn't immediately notice it standing in a group of Series IIs. On examination it does look very different to the Series II but it is still clearly a Discovery and nothing like as bulky-looking as the latest Range Rover. As for being a bit ugly, I don't think so, in fact I like its looks.
My Discovery II Td5 is great to drive but this one struck me as being superb. I covered about 20 miles, through town, along country roads and a fast dual carriageway and immediately felt completely at ease and experienced none of the trepidation I sometimes feel when driving a strange vehicle for the first time. Great ride and handling, a sweet, quiet, responsive engine and a very smooth 6-speed automatic box. . As to the question of to what extent the greater output of the new engine is counteracted by the vehicle's increased weight, it certainly felt lively although I didn't notice the dramatic improvement suggested by the brochure figures of 0-60mph in 11 seconds, compared with the Td5 brochure's 15.8 seconds.
My wife and I frequently stack our Td5's loadspace with heavy items, so the matter of loading over a split tailgate concerns us. We used to manage well enough with a Range Rover Classic but that was years ago. The salesman's response was that the lower flap is cut away on one side to make loading easier, but it would seem to make more sense for the flap to be short all the way across, with a straight-line joint between the lower and upper sections. I tend to think it is just a designer's attempt to show a family resemblance with the odd-shaped tailgate window of the previous models.. A sliding loadspace floor is offered as an accessory but I assume this would prevent the third-row seats from being used and, with an increasing number of grandchildren, we do need these seats to be readily available.
The salesman demonstrated how all the second and third-row seats can be individually folded flat into the floor. Very neat (although the mechanism seemed to be a bit stiff) and a vast space can be created but, thinking about it since, I wonder whether comfort, particularly in he second-row where it matters most, has been compromised by making the seat bases and backs thin enough to fold away flat.
A thought has also occurred to me about the spare wheel - is it properly secured against theft or will it suffer the fate of underfloor mounted spares on many of today's cars?
Two big questions remain for me. First, have Ford done what BMW failed to do completely, and managed to enforce rigid quality control at LR? And secondly, where can I get the money from? The SE model I drove is priced at UK pounds 36,995 plus 1,495 for the auto box and 495 for metallic paint. Takes a bit of thinking about, particularly as it seems that discounts will be hard to get, for a while at least.