 | Home > Off Topic > The Clarkson Review: Land Rover Discovery Sport |
 
|
|
|
| Supacat Member Since: 16 Oct 2012 Location: West Yorkshire Posts: 11018   
|
"According to every single clickbait site on Google, the worst road in the world is in Bolivia. I’ve driven up it and, I’ll admit, it’s fairly terrible. worst road in the world is in Bolivia. I’ve driven up it and, I’ll admit, it’s fairly terrible. There’s a constant sense that you’re playing automotive snakes and ladders; that at any moment you’ll land on the wrong square and find yourself in a thousand-foot, land-sky-land-sky-crash-bang-wallop plunge back to where you began.
Another bad road listed by the internet is the Alaska Highway, and I’ve driven that one too. For sure, it’s very bumpy and it’s hard to fill the tank at the sporadic petrol stations because you have to hold the nozzle with one hand and fight off a plague of mozzies with the other. This is tricky, as many have the agility of an F-16. A road that’s not listed but should be runs along the eastern side of Lake Victoria. It’s mostly smooth and traffic-free, and you feel encouraged to travel at great speed. But it is peppered with sharp-edged potholes that are guaranteed to burst your tyre and break a wheel. And there is no RAC in Tanzania. Just lions. The worst road in the world is also not listed. It’s the RN5 in Madagascar and it’s not really a road at all. It was when the French built it, back in the day, but now it looks like a dried-up riverbed. There are boulders the size of space hoppers and they’re made from basalt, which makes granite look like ice cream. There’s mud, too, deep enough to drown in. And the road is so narrow that if you meet a car coming the other way, you are completely screwed. Locals employ boys to run a mile or so in front of their car, warning people coming in the opposite direction to pull over as soon as they see any kind of passing place. And most motorists are jealous of the boys because they can travel at four or five miles per hour. Even the hardiest high-riding pick-up can’t get close to that. I was there last month and over a week averaged 0.2mph. Mind you, I wasn’t driving a hardy, high-riding pick-up. I was driving something that will surprise you greatly when you find out what it was in an upcoming episode of The Grand Tour. And James May, he’d been even more ambitious. He was in a racing car. All of which brings me on to the vast array of four-wheel-drive off-roaders that litter the highways and byways of Britain. Yes, they will work better than a normal car when it snows, but when it snows here, or rains, or if it’s a bit windy, the motoring organisations order everyone to stay at home. So no one goes on the roads anyway.  Click image to enlarge It’s a mud world: Madagascar’s RN5 is more riverbed than road I saw footage online the other day of a man in a big, proper Range Rover chicken out of crossing a mildly flooded ford. The water would barely have reached the top of his wheels, but he decided to take the long way instead. And I just sat there, thinking: “Why didn’t you buy a Ford Mustang instead? Or some wellies?” I was shooting last week. Everyone turned up in 4x4s and everyone spent the day slithering into walls and fences because everyone was using road tyres. On wet grass, that’s like trying to make progress in Fairy Liquid shoes on a frozen lake. The upshot, then, is that no one needs a four-wheel-drive car, partly because conditions here are rarely bad enough to warrant the technology and partly because when they are, we don’t have the skill or balls or tyres to cope. And so we have the new Land Rover Discovery Sport, which sits in the company’s increasingly complex range as a modern-day equivalent of the old Freelander. And it isn’t new. Not really. When the Discovery Sport was launched several years ago, Land Rover said much better engines would be fitted soon. And that’s all that’s really happened: the new engines have come along to punish impatient people for being early adopters. Those who waited can pat themselves on the back because the diesel engine in my test car was extremely smooth. That said, it wasn’t even on nodding terms with being extremely powerful. Couple this to a gearbox that could never really make up its mind and a representative from the EU’s emissions department in the exhaust system, and you have a car that was not much fun to hustle. And was poor at exploiting gaps in the traffic. Also, in a field, on its road tyres, it was like Bambi. However, despite all this, and a price tag getting perilously close to £50,000, it’s a very, very good car. For more than a decade I’ve argued that the Volvo XC90 is the only seven-seat school runster worth considering. And I still think it’s a fantastic piece of design. But it has become quite large. That’s where the Discovery Sport comes in. It, too, is available with seven seats, but it’s not really that large at all. They’ve just been really clever with the packaging, redesigning the rear suspension and fitting seat runners so that you really can get five adults and two kids in there. It’s a nice place to sit as well. This is partly because the engine and gearbox combination do not encourage crazy driving practices, but mostly because this has to be one of the most comfortable cars I’ve driven. It’s far better than a big Range Rover, which can crash into potholes occasionally. The Disco Sport doesn’t. It’s like riding around on a plate of Angel Delight. Maybe Audi and BMW can sell you a car of this type with slightly better command and control centres, but they emphatically cannot sell you a car with more off-road gizmos. The tyres will always be the weak link, yet in dry conditions a Disco will get you further into the woods than a Q5 or an X3. It also has a much more weird rear-view mirror. This is because it’s actually a television screen taking a feed from a camera mounted on the roof. In the showroom, this is a “sign here” gimmick that will win you over, but on the road it’s strange having the tarmac spooling away from you in the corner of your eye. Better to push a button and use it as a mirror. Especially as this lets you also see which kid is doing the biting and the bullying in the back seats. I liked the Sport. I liked the way it looked. I liked the extraordinary comfort and I liked the practicality as well. Of course, you don’t need such a thing, and if you ever did, you would be told by the authorities to get under your bed and whimper until the weather improves. But, that being said, this is definitely the car I’d buy if I needed something I don’t need. And I didn’t mind paying through the nose for it." https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/jeremy-...-2swxrb6mn Seems to have hit the nail on head here, especially the final two sentences. |
||
22nd Dec 2019 6:42pm |
|
| Swine&Small Member Since: 20 Mar 2017 Location: Norfolk Posts: 1223
|
How about the Sela Pass going into Tawang in the Himalayas..1000 foot drop and thick ice even the waterfall is frozen solid.
Got a puncture and found the spare was bald, but no going back. Tremendous experience.  1983 Series 3 Pick up in Marine Blue
1967 Morris Traveller 1966 Morris Convertible 2012 VW T5 Camper Quod Abundat Non Obstat. |
||
|
22nd Dec 2019 7:36pm |
|
| Oldyellar Member Since: 04 Sep 2015 Location: Central Posts: 410  
|
Disco sport is the worse car I have ever had the misfortune of sitting in. I'd rather have a dacia or yeti
|
||
|
22nd Dec 2019 9:48pm |
|
| Huttopia Member Since: 23 Feb 2016 Location: West Midlands Posts: 1978
|
Mmmm, we had one as a loan car which I took to Cornwall, and it didn’t work for us. Two kids, two dogs and some kit, it was slow, thirsty, noisy and the interior trim was cheap and nasty. It was however a car, so beat walking.
|
||
|
23rd Dec 2019 9:18am |
|
| defender9 Member Since: 12 Mar 2016 Location: Fylde Coast Posts: 1629 
|
And as a Yeti owner I would agree  |
||
|
23rd Dec 2019 11:00am |
|
| Oldyellar Member Since: 04 Sep 2015 Location: Central Posts: 410
|
Not just I'm saying there is any thing wrong with the yeti I just would much rather have one, a DSG one
 |
||
|
23rd Dec 2019 6:39pm |
|
| Naks Member Since: 27 Jan 2009 Location: Stellenbosch, ZA Posts: 2669  
|
aren't the Ingenium diesel engines prone to oil dilution?
how are the petrol ones holding up? -- 2010 Defender Puma 90 + BAS remap + Alive IC + Slickshift + Ashcroft ATB rear 2015 Range Rover Sport V8 Supercharged
Defender Puma Workshop Manual: https://bit.ly/2zZ1en9 Discovery 4 Workshop Manual: https://bit.ly/2zXrtKO Range Rover/Sport L320/L322/L494 Workshop Manual: https://bit.ly/2zc58JQ |
||
|
29th Dec 2019 7:34pm |
|
|
|
| All times are GMT + 1 Hour |
< Previous Topic | Next Topic > |
Posting Rules
|
Site Copyright © 2006-2025 Futuranet Ltd & Martin Lewis
