DISCOVERY
This driver is looking for his friend who fell out the boot
The Land Rover Discovery is an offroad focused mid-size luxury 4x4. There have been four generations of this vehicle, which was first introduced in 1989. This is surprising as most of the original Discovery owners lost a lot of their friends through falling through the rusty hole in the boot.
The Series I Discovery was introduced into the United Kingdom in 1989. The company
code-named the vehicle "Project Jay" as in Jay and Silent Bob as you would have to be 'stoned' to cope with the body roll.
The Discovery was initially available only as a three-door version and the five-door became available the following year after large areas of the three door one had corroded away to allow another entry point. Both were fitted with five seats, with the option to have two further seats fitted in the boot, these seats had downward ejector type mechanics when the boot floor rusted away and the passenger plunged down under the rear wheels.
Early Discoveries had a large 'compass and mountain' side decals worn to disguise wavy panel fit and help glue the car together and prevent bits falling off.
The Series I Discovery was introduced into the United Kingdom in 1989. The company
code-named the vehicle "Project Jay" as in Jay and Silent Bob as you would have to be 'stoned' to cope with the body roll.
The Discovery was initially available only as a three-door version and the five-door became available the following year after large areas of the three door one had corroded away to allow another entry point. Both were fitted with five seats, with the option to have two further seats fitted in the boot, these seats had downward ejector type mechanics when the boot floor rusted away and the passenger plunged down under the rear wheels.
Early Discoveries had a large 'compass and mountain' side decals worn to disguise wavy panel fit and help glue the car together and prevent bits falling off.
The Series II debuted in autumn 1998, Land Rover promoted that
the Discovery Series II had been modified with 720 'differences'. People soon got tired of looking for the differences though and went back to looking for faults and to be fair they were a bit easier to find. In 2003 -2004 the Discovery was given a "face-lift" which was purely cosmetic and helped keep Land Rover up with the times as face lifts and liposuction were all the rage. The chelsea face lift which involves tying ones hair up with a very tight rubber band and thus pulling ones face back and tightening the skin was not one of the face lifts applied, although they did do some work around the Discoveries 'eyes'. |
The Discovery 3 features Full Independant Suspension (FIS). Like the Series III Range Rover, this was an air suspension system, enabling ride-height ajustment by simply pumping up or deflating the air bags. The vehicle can be raised to provide ground clearance when off-road, but lowered at high speeds to improve handling. This feature became immensley popular with pimps who wished to make their car bounce up and down.
The engines used in the Discovery 3 were all taken from Land Rover's sister company at the time, Jaguar. A Ford -developed 2.7 litre, 195 hp diesel engine (the TDV6). This was a reasonably good engine if you were a lucky person. On some models cranks shafts broke or on 2007 models large pieces of engine block snapped off allowing the timing belt tensioner to fall off and the engine to eat itself. These modifications made sure that Land Rover was able to stick with it's original company ethos of if it ain't broke break it and if it is broke it's a genuine Land Rover. The vehicle was well received by the press on its launch, with the Terrain Response system, improved on-road dynamics and interior design being selected for praise probably because a spice girl never designed it. Jeremy Clarkson of the BBC's Top Gear motoring show drove one to the top of Cnoc an Fhreiceadain, a 307 m (1,007 ft) mountain near Tongue in northern Scotland, where no vehicle had previously reached. This is true and not a Cnok of Shnit because if it were you wouldn't want Tongue to be anywhere near it. Discovery 3 was very popular in Scotland where they wanted a luxury 4x4 but were too tight to buy a Range Rover. In Australia, the vehicle was awarded "4WD of the Year" by the 4WD press because we all know our antipodean friends tend to be pissed out of their minds a lot and would probably have voted a kangaroo for the best off road vehicle if one had passed at the time. |
The Discovery 3 / LR3 was introduced in 2 April 2004 Land Rover
were scared if they released it a day earlier everyone would think they were taking the piss. It retained the key features of the Discovery, such as the stepped roofline and steeply-raked windscreen which is idea for catching stones. The LR3 name was chosen for North American markets as we did try to teach them English but they got it all wrong and if Land Rover used a big word like Discovery they might get confused. |
Discovery 4
Parked by the pipe where Mr Hanky comes out
The Discovery 4 / LR4 is an updated version of the Discovery 3, they updated the cup holders for example to an extraordinarily annoying place where they became impracticle. As with most modern Land Rovers they colour coded the wheel arches and bumper at this time. This would appear like a silly thing to have forgotten to do on the Discovery 3 but in honesty it was a clever plan to save the designers of having to think too hard for upgrades. The one major difference was they forgot to make a manual gearbox and convinced their users that automatic is best to cover it up. The automatics gearboxes however do tend to need a 'mega flush' from time to time whereas the Discovery 3 manual gearboxes worked fine. A mega flush is to clean out all the old oil and detritus and refill the gearbox oil, much like when you drop a christmas log that is too big and you have to hold the float down in the toilet tank to get more water in there to float it and send it on it's way to the coast.