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Land Rover Discovery SVX Looks Out of Place on the Flat Frankfurt Floor

A lot of people felt the new Land Rover Discovery had lost its edge, turning from a robust SUV with no-nonsense looks into a posh soccer-mom-mobil that spends way too many hours in front of the mirror plucking its eyebrows.
Land Rover Discovery SVX in Frankfurt 14 photos
Photo: S. Baldauf/SB-Medien
Land Rover Discovery SVX in FrankfurtLand Rover Discovery SVX in FrankfurtLand Rover Discovery SVX in FrankfurtLand Rover Discovery SVX in FrankfurtLand Rover Discovery SVX in FrankfurtLand Rover Discovery SVX in FrankfurtLand Rover Discovery SVX in FrankfurtLand Rover Discovery SVX in FrankfurtLand Rover Discovery SVX in FrankfurtLand Rover Discovery SVX in FrankfurtLand Rover Discovery SVX in FrankfurtLand Rover Discovery SVX in FrankfurtLand Rover Discovery SVX in Frankfurt
And, just by looking at it, you can kind of see where they're coming from. If you loved the Discovery 4, you simply can't have the same feelings for the new one. They are completely different aesthetic propositions, and that rounded rear end is even weirder when you see it in person.

That may be so, but it's not the looks that decide how well a vehicle does when the asphalt runs out, and on that aspect, the new Disco hasn't lost a thing. Well, it doesn't have a body-on-frame architecture anymore, but other than that, all the necessary mechanical bits are there.

That must have made life much easier for the guys at SVO, Jaguar Land Rover's division dealing with vehicles out of the ordinary. Up to this point, the SV badge has been used to signal either extreme sportiness or supreme luxury. By adding an "X" at the end, the Special Vehicles Operations has created the first off-road-oriented SV vehicle, and it's just glorious.

Price aside, why you would buy any other Discovery than the SVX is beyond us, but sadly the financial part isn't something you can just brush aside. Land Rover has not divulged how much this thing costs, but we'd be surprised if you couldn't buy a fully-kitted Range Rover Autobiography and maybe even come out with some change.

Not that it wouldn't be worth it. The higher ground clearance makes the Discovery SVX look like it'll roll over in the first corner, but the Hydraulic Active Roll Control sees that it doesn't happen. It gets 275/55 20-inch Goodyear Wrangler all-terrain tires which should do a great job complimenting the revised Terrain Response 2 system, active center differential, and electronic rear locking diff when the going gets tough.

The aggressive front and rear bumpers and the wheel design make it look like a concept, but the Discovery SVX is very real. The same goes for the 5.0-liter supercharged V8 engine under the hood. The monstrous unit has been used in a lot of performance vehicles across the company's stable, but it's the first time it landed in a Land Rover.

Tuned to produce 525 hp and 625 Nm (461 pound-feet) of torque, it is the icing on the cake for a very special Discovery 5. The transmission is the same eight-speed automatic, but in another piece of good news, the rotary shifter is replaced by a pistol-shaped one. Is there anything wrong about this car?
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About the author: Vlad Mitrache
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"Boy meets car, boy loves car, boy gets journalism degree and starts job writing and editing at a car magazine" - 5/5. (Vlad Mitrache if he was a movie)
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