This car is not all it seems. Despite its name, and its obvious visual links to the full-size Range Rover, it is in all important matters a Land Rover Discovery - shorter and lower, yes, but built on the same floorpan and with the Discovery's comprehensive off-road system rather than the Range Rover's slightly less advanced version.It would be reasonable at this point to ask why Land Rover didn't make a Discovery Sport instead. Slightly different styling and a change of badge would have done the job. But the company does not believe that Discovery owners are looking for this kind of car, which is why the Sport has been devised as the "junior" luxury model rather than a spruced-up off-roader.In its third incarnation, of course, the Discovery is more or less a luxury model in its own right. That's why Land Rover was able, for example, to carry over the interior almost unchanged (though there are detail alterations including a wider centre console). And the Discovery provided a good basis for the Sport's suspension, which has been tuned in such a way as to give astonishingly good ride quality as well as more nimble handling.Well, "nimble" in comparison with other Land Rover products at least. The Sport may be relatively compact, but on the road you're always conscious that this is an exceptionally heavy car, and that a large proportion of its weight is a long way off the ground. If the car relied on standard springs and dampers this might cause problems, but the Sport uses Land Rover's air suspension with double wishbones and Dynamic Response system. This is also one of the more surprising entries in the list of cars whose chassis development programme included pounding round the Nürburgring Nordschleife, which must have been worth watching.As a result of all that, the Sport is fairly easy to place, while the considerable amount of body lean does not translate into a change of line requiring steering correction halfway through a bend, as it might otherwise do.The Sport's weight also means that you need the 390bhp supercharged 4.2-litre engine if you want it to feel rapid in a straight line. The test car had the naturally-aspirated 4.4-litre unit with 300bhp, and even enthusiastic use of the throttle never made it seem especially quick. Such straightline performance as there is comes at a great price: combined fuel economy is south of 20mpg, so you'll be visiting fuel retail outlets on a regular basis if you drive it more than a couple of hundred yards per week.If you can afford the car, though, you can afford to fill the tank. In HSE form, as here, the Sport costs just short of £50,000. That's 10% more than the SE - the only other option with the 4.4 V8 engine - and for the extra money you get 19" alloy wheels (they're 18" on the lesser model), navigation, front park distance control, metallic paintwork and seat position memory.With all that equipment, plus what is shared with the SE, it's unlikely that many owners will venture far from sealed road surfaces. If they do, they'll find that, despite the Discovery-like 4x4 system, the Sport's off-road ability is compromised by the relative lack of ground clearance.A Sport will still tackle terrain far more challenging than it is ever likely to meet, so there's a lot of safety margin as long as the driver behaves sensibly. Its most important quality, though, is that it succeeds in pretending to be a chic alternative to the iconic Range Rover, even if underneath the skin it's nothing of the kind. Engine 4394cc, 8 cylinders Power 300bhp Transmission 6-speed automatic Fuel/CO2 18.9mpg / 352g/km Acceleration 0-62mph: 8.2 seconds Top speed 130mph Price £49,995 Details correct at publication date
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