Axon’s Automotive Anorak: Celebrating 30 years of the Land Rover Discovery

I reported this unusual behavior to a staff member on the Land Rover stand, only to spot the chap climbing out of the new Discovery and quickly diving into the nearest Gents, clutching his small catch of trim samples. I didn’t hang around to see what happened next, but I can only assume that he was working for a rival 4x4 vehicle maker and had been tasked finding out what the established Solihull off-road maker had just created with interior design input from respected English designer Jasper Conran OBE.

Our curious ‘industrial spy’ friend wouldn’t have had to have looked too closely to realise that the quality of the pre-production Discoveries displayed at Frankfurt left much to be desired. They really weren’t going to cause the opposition’s quality control teams too many sleepless nights.

The quality of the initial production Discoveries wasn’t much better, either, with niggling faults in almost all areas, risking the early reputation of this, the first new model launched under the stand-along Land Rover brand. (The existing short- and long-wheelbase Land Rover and Range Rover were both the creations and products of Rover Cars, Land Rover not being founded as a stand-alone company until 1978.)

When the cash-starved Austin Rover Group – the guardians of Land Rover at the time – developed ‘Project Jay’ to become the Discovery to plug the yawning gap between the Land Rover Defender and Range Rover, it did so most ingeniously and on an extremely tight budget, heavily raiding the main Group’s parts bins in the process.

To help shave costs, for example, the Discovery robbed the headlights from Austin Rover’s Freight-Rover (Sherpa) light commercial vehicle, with the tail lamps borrowed from the Austin Maestro van and the side repeater flashers from a Metro. Column stalks were taken from the Rover 800, with window switches from the Austin Montego. The door handles were from ye olde Morris Marina (also used on Leyland’s Austin Allegro, Triumph TR7 and classic four-door Range Rover), attached to doors basically sourced from the costlier Range Rover, including the frames, plus side glass, as well that capable off-roader’s chassis.

This cunning use of the Austin Rover parts bin saved Land Rover both time and money in developing the ‘Project Jay’ Discovery, and enhanced the model’s overall profit margins, with most buyers blissfully unaware of the sundry mainstream components incorporated into the 4x4 (before the American SUV term became common British parlance too).

The original 1989 three-door Discovery was soon joined by the more popular five-door derivative, with the heavily facelifted (and usefully improved, especially in terms of quality) Series 2 ‘Disco’ model launched in 1998, with tail lamps mounted higher up the car’s rear, later Range Rover-ish ‘family look’ headlights, and so on. This first-generation bodyshell proved to be a very strong seller for Land Rover.

The all-new second-generation model (confusingly called the Discovery 3 by Land Rover) debuted in 2004, the car moving away from the more agricultural Matra Rancho-esque form with an extra glass pane above the rear side windows, to a more modern, premium square-cut style. The Disco 3 (LS3 in the USA due to the Discovery’s initial tarnished image and name) was subtly revised in 2009 to be officially (but bewilderingly) rebranded the Discovery 4. These second-generation Discos really put the model on the map, cementing its reputation as a fine, capable off-roader (not that many were used for such activities) and accounting for the majority of the Land Rover brand’s global sales.

For 2017 the new, true third-generation Discovery was introduced, the less practical and sloppy-backed model proving somewhat controversial and disliked by some loyal fans of the previous ‘more substance-over-style’ Disco. Despite this, and its ‘wonky’ off-centre rear licence plate, the latest Discovery is proving to be another success for Land Rover.

In between all of this, Land Rover added the smaller Discovery Sport ‘sub-brand’ model in 2014 to replace the previous Freelanders (which also suffered image problems due to poor quality standards like the early Discos), and is helping to build on the Discovery’s now enviable reputation (30 years on) by using some elements of the current model for the brand new Defender, recently launched at the same IAA Frankfurt Show venue three decades after the world debut of the original budget-built Discovery way back in 1989. Hopefully no SUV rivals were found snaffling a few interior ‘souvenirs’ of Land Rover’s latest key new model offering this time around!