One thing you can say about the Discovery is that it suits a wide variety of budgets. The cheapest model in the range, the GS manual, comes in at £29,950, while at the other end of the scale there's the HSE tested here, which officially costs £45,360 but, with the options that are fitted to it, would set you back by just short of £50,000.Despite this considerable price gap (you could fit quite a decently-equipped Ford Mondeo into it without touching the sides) every Discovery is more or less the same as every other Discovery. The differences relate to whether you either want or could do without various pieces of equipment - or, to look at it another way, whether you want to use your Discovery as a workhorse or as a rather luxurious SUV.Regardless of how you want to play this, the car will have only one engine. There is now no such thing as a new petrol Discovery - instead you get the 2.7-litre V6 turbo diesel which has now been fitted to a considerable number of Fords, cars built by companies formerly owned by Ford (namely Land Rover, Range Rover and Jaguar), Citroens and Peugeots. It's difficult to find any reason to complain about this, since the engine is exceptionally good and makes Discovery driving a more peaceful affair than could possibly have been imagined when the first-generation version was launched.Every Discovery is available with a six-speed automatic gearbox, and in fact if you buy either this HSE or the one-step-down SE it's the only option. A six-speed manual is offered with the lowlier GS and XS versions, at a saving of £1505, and it can't be a coincidence that those are the ones more likely to be required to do serious off-roading.But whichever one you pick you're going to be able to leave civilisation behind you to a much greater extent than you could in any SUV which has the word "lifestyle" attached to it. As you can see from the photos accompanying this article, I took the test car over some reasonably difficult ground but didn't come close to reaching its limits. When the third Discovery was introduced to the UK press back in 2004 we were encouraged to stretch it much further, and I refer you to Mike Grundon's launch report from that time if you want details on how impressive it was.The Discovery will clamber over far more difficult ground than most owners will be prepared to countenance even if you leave it on the settings that are designed for road use, but when things get tougher you can start playing with the Terrain Response System, which prepares it for conditions such as gravel, snow, mud and clambering over rocks. This is very clever and very effective, but I doubted four years ago whether many buyers would ever actually need to use the facility, and I'm still not convinced. It's entirely possible that Discovery types may enjoy - and be prepared to for - this kind of thing even if they're never actually going to use it.That being the case, the on-road behaviour is very important, and here the current Discovery does a lot better than either of its predecessor did. I've already mentioned that the engine is quiet; on top of that, the interior is very comfortable and the ride, considering the car's shape and where the weight is, is astonishingly good. The Discovery will also take corners with some enthusiasm, but there's a lot of body roll, and you'd be wise to remember that it was never designed for changing direction abruptly at high speed - care is definitely required, particularly in wet conditions.Like the other models in the range, this one has seven seats, and I was all prepared to be quite scathing about this until I actually tried sitting in the back row. Well, stone me if it didn't turn out that access past the middle-row seats (which tumble forward for this purpose) is really rather good, and once you're installed back there you'll find far more space than in rival products which, it's claimed, can transport seven people. The Discovery really can do this, and they can all be at least six feet tall (though those back seats are so near the back door that I would be very concerned about sitting in either of them during a rear-end shunt).In the history of writing reviews about Land Rover products a tradition has developed whereby the writer must mention reliability at some point. I had only one problem, which was that the left headlight refused to dip in night driving, which caused fury and consternation among my fellow road users until the problem suddenly fixed itself. Odd, but I wasn't going to complain since nobody was flashing their own lights at me any more.As of August this year, the Discovery has looked slightly different from before, with body-colouring for the bumpers and exterior trim, a wider range of metallic colours, new 19" alloy wheels and an updated Bluetooth phone system. The range line-up remains as before, though, with HSE representing the Furthest North of Discovery luxury.The reason the test car cost more than £5000 above a "standard" HSE is that it was fitted with an active locking rear differential (£495, if you think you're going to get a bit serious off-road), a tyre pressure monitoring system (£385, or you could just buy a gauge), a cool box in the centre console (£230), a towing pack (£440), carpet mats (£125!), rear air-conditioning (£700) and - to save the most expensive till last - a DVD-based rear entertainment system for £2250.Running costs will, of course, be high, though nothing like what they used to be when there was a petrol V8. Combined fuel economy is 27.7mpg (very similar to what the trip computer told me I'd managed after driving in a wide variety of conditions) and the CO2 rating is 270g/km, which means VED of £400 now, £440 from next April and £455 from 2010, assuming the proposed car tax structure doesn't change in the meantime. Engine 2720cc, 6 cylinders Power 188bhp Transmission 6-speed manual Fuel/CO2 27.7mpg / 270g/km Acceleration 0-62mph: 11.7 seconds Top speed 112mph Price £45,360 Details correct at publication date
