Land Rover Discovery 2.0 review: Less is roar

HAS this ever happened to you? You're supposed to collect your wife in 10 minutes from somewhere 20 minutes away when she calls to check if you're on your way, because women are wise like that. Of course you are, you tell her. Then you scramble to put trousers on and scurry to the car.

For a situation like that, you'd imagine the perfect machine to save you from ruin might be something decidedly zippy and fast, say a Porsche 718 Cayman or a Volkswagen Golf R. But no. What you really want is something like this, the Land Rover Discovery.

How quickly you can get somewhere depends on how swiftly other drivers get out of your way, after all, and little else is better at clearing a swathe through traffic than a giant Land Rover.

Fill someone's rear view mirror with a Discovery's grille, and watch how they're immediately persuaded to pull aside meekly. Having little concept of what a looking glass is or what function it serves in a car, Grab drivers are the notable exception.

I happen to believe there's a special place in perdition for drivers who tailgate, so I would never encourage that sort of aggression, but one can't help oneself in a car like the Discovery.

It's so big, its footprint so vast, that it's a miracle that buying one doesn't oblige you to write a cheque for property stamp duties. And it's so butch, it makes Chuck Norris look like a motoring writer for a business newspaper.

While Discos have always been large and chunky, what's new about this one is its relatively teeny engine. In Singapore, your only Discovery options are a 2.0-litre SE version for S$299,999 (including Certificate Of Entitlement) and the 2.0-litre HSE, which comes with a bit more equipment for an extra S$25,000.

Before this, the Discovery came with bigger stuff in the engine bay: a 3.0-litre V6 engine, and before that, a 3.0-litre diesel one. Now, 2.0 litres isn't exactly tiny - I looked under the bonnet and managed to find the Discovery's engine without a magnifying glass - but it's reasonable to wonder if it's up to the job of moving something this big around.

Worse, what if the miniature engine gives your friends a reason to laugh at your massive Land Rover?

The good news is, the Disco is as perky as a terrier on caffeine. (The bad news is, your friends are jerks.) A turbocharger helps the engine wring 300 horsepower from its compact capacity, and with an eight-speed auto to help things along, the Land Rover accelerates with a gratifying amount of vim.

There's some lag when it first gets under way, but once the engine is spinning quickly enough to let the turbo build up some boost, the Land Rover hikes its skirt up and gets going properly.

In any case, some of the Disco's key rivals are also powered by 2.0-litre engines. Two that spring to mind are the Audi Q7 and Volvo XC90, both large Sport Utility Vehicles with seven seats apiece, like the Land Rover. Neither of them struggle to get out of their own way.

But if anything, the Land Rover Discovery is what those other SUVs want to be. Put off-roading tyres on it, set the Terrain Response System to the relevant mode, and it's likely that Nature herself couldn't stop you if she tried.

Speaking as someone who finds mud generally icky, I would never take a Discovery into the wild brown yonder, but I can see the point of its off-roading features.

The air suspension can raise the Land Rover to let it tiptoe over boulder-strewn terrain, for example, but it also enables it to swish through water 90cm deep. Bear in mind, 30cm of moving water is sometimes enough to sweep a normal car away. Conversely, the Disco can drop itself by 15mm at the touch of a button to make clambering aboard easier.

Inside, the view is so commanding that you can see Timbuktu from the driver's seat, which also makes driving through town less stressful.

Meanwhile, the cabin is so cavernous, you don't have to be a homunculus to fit comfortably into the rearmost seats. In fact, Land Rover says the third-row chairs could accommodate the 95th percentile adult. It's just as well the air-con vents back there work well, then, because it's one thing to put big guys in those seats, and quite another if they're big and sweaty.

If you can find the money for the posher HSE version, you get shiny bling to look at like a digital instrument panel and 20-inch wheels, but the real treat is an electric seat-folding system that lets you configure the cabin by tapping the main touchscreen or prodding the relevant switches.

With all the back seats folded, the Discovery can carry 2,406 litres of stuff, so it's a proper workhorse. But those chairs are big and chunky, which suggests that manipulating them manually would be a sweaty job. Better to let motors do the work.

Mind you, the seven seats and big boot make this a capable family car above all else, and thinking of the Discovery in such selfless terms would be wise. As a driving experience, it's actually a dud, since one consequence of the car's size and height is that the handling is vague and wallowy.

But you can still order the Discovery about and it does eventually respond to your commands. In that respect, it's totally sympatico with every woolly-headed husband on the planet.

Land Rover Discovery 2.0 Si4 HSE

Engine 1,997cc, inline 4, turbocharged Power 300hp at 5,500rpm Torque 400Nm at 1,500-4,000rpm Gearbox 8-speed automatic 0-100km/h 7.7 seconds Top Speed 201km/h Efficiency 9.6L/100km Agent Wearnes Automotive Price S$324,999 with COE Available now