Source: Autocar | Date: 09.01.2019 | Author: n/a | Circulation: 20543 | Page: 48-53

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January 09, 2019 Jaguar Land Rover Global Daily News Briefing 1 d Source: Autocar | Date: 09.01.2019 | Author: n/a | Circulation: 20543 | Page: 48-53

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e’ve guided you towards Britain’s brilliant and lets me focus on steering, which cleverly landscaped into rolling, sheep-munched driving roads, but the hard requires much closer attention off road than on. hillsides high on the 3000-acre Broughton I lall Wbcststuff need not be your limit for a There’s also a technical assault course but we’re Estate near Skipton. truly satisfying motoring year. Off here for the wilderness, so sample the centre’s 150 Today’s Evoque has very similar off-roading kit road is where the real challenge lies miles of rutted upland tracks. The Discovery Sport to yesterday’s Discovery Sport and a near-identical and with a range of vehicles that crave the most delivers ample traction, with barely a hiccuping approach angle, hut it actually boasts the better rutted trucks and the steepest inclines, Land Rover wheel and we’re rewarded with beautiful vistas breakover and departure angles by virtue ofits

Experience (LRE) centres offer the most accessible towards Pitlochry and the Cairngorms, watched shorter wheelbase and rear overhang. Still, its way to get down and dirty. We visited six LREs in over by a circling golden eagle. ride height again means certain obstacles, such

the UK to find out how. as the rock crawl, are off the menu unless we’re LRE Yorkshire to spend an age tiptoeing through them in fear of LRE Scotland RANGE ROVER EVOQUE TD4 180 re-profiling the underside. DISCOVERY SPORT TD4 180 HSE AUTO SE TECH AUTO There’s loads we can do, though. Creeping adventure in wooded Our begins the lush, Instructor Adam Wilcox shows us LRE Yorkshire, down a hill, rollers on the driver’s side simulate Perthshire hills just outside Dunkeld. The sky is a where gravelly tracks and a range of obstacles are ice and the HDC modulates braking just enough brilliant blue and instructor Will Cox has a spotless white Discovery Sport ready for us to su lly. Before starting, it’s worth mentioning what hardware the Discovery Sport doesn’t have. Like

its Evoque cousin, there’s no low range and it only comes on coils, limiting ride height to 211 mm. (Air-sprung Range Rovers clear 295 mm.) And our TD4 IBO doesn’t get the GKN-sourced Active

Driveline that not only defaults to front drive

when conditions allow but also features a traction-

hunting, torque-vectoring rear e-differential. However, it does have Land Rover’s proprietary

Terrain Response (TR) system to modulate steering, throttle, gearbox, brakes and the electronic centre coupling. Its grass/gravel/snow mode best negotiates the centre’s 280 acres of woodland, with its steep, tight trails, although sand and mud-rut programmes feature, too. Hill Descent Control (HDC) does its thing, policing individual discs to edge us down a gravelly slope with feet off the pedals, but new to me is the optional All Terrain Progress Control - a sort of off-road cruise control. I set a maximum speed using the wheel-mounted buttons. Then the

Discovery Sport clambers on through the shadowy dells, feeling out the loose, root-strapped ground with each wheel like fingertips on braille. It’s quite

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side the car on gamely despite its to keep those wheels turning, ready for when grip slope, clinging resumes. Then we crest a summit on a right-angled lofty, near 2.5-tonne stature. 'ski bend, and although the absence of air springs The steepest section is the 45deg slope’, where low' low but means the rear nearside wheel is more than afoot range means speed high revs as mainline the car’s haul itself the off the ground - and I become suspended by my we reserves to up, seatbelt - those that remain earthbound are easily optional surround-view cameras lending a view with forward when the windscreen reveals only sky. capable of guiding the ear through and down rock-solid stability. There’s also a gravel-strewn, rocky incline that We then try two optional tech toys that help better represents natural topography. That the remove the guesswork from off-roading. First, Discovery grapples up is impressive enough, but tabs it bone for this would be surround-view cameras let us keep close on ■were not dry our visit, a waterfall that the front wheels as we negotiate a tight, winding rushing even Evoques must conquer. audio- Don’t let Halewood’s diminutiveness put log road. Then a pair of sensors give an you off: Dutton it’s till three-hour session visual guide to water depth as we slosh through says easy to a the centre’s extensive wading troughs, where here, and I can see why. the voguish Evoque actually matches the old Defender’s 500 mm wading limit. LRE RANGE ROVER VELAR D3OO LRE R-DYNAMIC HSE AUTO DISCOVERY TD6 HSE AUTO This place wins the dramatic arrival award. We Wedged between the Halewood plant that churns enter gothic revival through out Discovery Sports and Evoques and a busy dual a grand arehw ray to find the fleet of white Land Alex carriageway, LRE Liverpool’s man-made terrain Rovers lined up inside. From here, instructor onto the centre’s acres of park covers barely five acres but squeezes in a Brown guides us 1000 wealth of obstacles. off-road terrain in a Velar.

For Land Rover’s full suite of off-road hardware, Although its platform owes more tojaguar, the Velar features of Land a Discovery is the cheapest solution. Today’s diesel plenty Rover toys, including V brings6 a low-range ratio (2.93:1, selectable up to Gradient Release Control (for smoother hill starts), 37mph) and air suspension, plus the optional GKN torque-moderating Low Traction Launch, HDC EXPERIENCE THE WORLD rear e-diff that’s available in all four larger models. and TR, hut no low range. The V diesel6 comes Like the central transfer case, it uses a multi-plate with air springs, to which our car adds £2190 Experience of wilderness-friendly options: wet clutch to redistribute torque in an instant. There are 29 Land Rover centres in ATPC,TR2, Low range also adds a throttle-progressive, total, covering four continents. surround-view, wade sensing and rear e-diff. differential-locking rock-crawl mode to TR and We visited six of the nine UK locations, The site features both wooded and open England trails through the Peckforton from whose off-road infographics are more embellished than in bypassing the East of centre at Hills, the smaller cars to show the locking status of both Rockingham Castle, the West Country location sandstone the castle was built. We rise through the active differentials, suspension articulation, wheel in East Devon and the London facility by Luton trees to trace a dramatic cliff-top on 200-year-old slip and steering angle, keeping you fully informed Hoo Hotel. Paid experiences range from one hour tracks, mud-ruts mode raising the suspension and at a glance. We also have optional TR2, which adds to a full day, but Land Rover customers get a lending us the revs needed to mount each rock, a self-governing automatic traction programme. complimentary half-day when buying a new car. furrow and root. Europe, With instructor Mai Dutton guiding, we engage There are nine more across mainland We divert into a flooded quarry that calls for low range and the ride height automatically rises from a Catalan farm to a snowy lakeside forest HDC, wading and side-sloping together. Those 75mm to 283 mm, allowing the Discovery to meld in Finland and the Black Sea coast near Istanbul. who consider the Velar more SUV than 4x4 might its way across the offset mounds of the ‘elephant’s Further worldwide locations are Russia, China, double-take at its progress; through the water, footprints’ where the smaller cars would cock Canada, the US, the Middle East and South Africa. which looks (but doesn’t smell) like chocolate

wheels. Then we round ‘the cone’, with its 35deg Yazoo, it’s steady and assured, with just an ->

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<-extra pump of throttle required here and there,

empowering the electronics to drag us through the sodden, silty base.

Then the Velar squeezes through a Victorian cart cutting, trudging through deep, squelchy, clagging mud. Despite wearing showroom-spec tyres (as all LRE vehicles do), its undeterred. We finish in Peckfortons terrain park, which rests within a large, lush quarry, reclaimed by nature but for myriad obstacles built into the landscape. It’s how Haievvood might look 100 years post-apocalypse. Even on air springs, ride height rules out a handful

of features - but the rest is meat and drink. Given the Velars considerable on-road repertoire, that

compromise seems more than reasonable. LRE Solihull

RANGE ROVER SDVB VOGUE SE AUTO Jaguar Land Rover’s sprawling Solihull plant is where the Land Rover story began: the first

production vehicles were built here 70 years ago. Today, its where the four larger models are made, and we’re going to give the flagship Range Rover a wilderness workout at the site’s own experience centre. Our 4-4-litre SDVB Vogue SH has been optioned with surround-view and wade sensing, thereby matching the Discovery from Haievvood in its comprehensive off-road specification.

Instructor Phil Sutton introduces the facility’s drowning the front camera. Without momentum, three sections, which boast 14 miles oftraeks. The a Defender would leak like a sieve here, but we can Adventure Zone is a compact, neatly landscaped stop and sit in our ventilated leather chairs, water assault course, while the Land Track incorporates slapping the doors while birds swoop through trails and obstacles into hill built from set a soil shafts of sunlight that pepper the surface. Such is excavated during factory expansion. Both are the brilliant, bizarre world of LRE Solihull. suitably challenging, but it’s the jungle Zone that

makes this place extra special. Land Rover’s own LREEastnor Garden of Eden, its where those very first cars RANGE ROVER SPORT SDV6 HSE

were developed, and new models still are. Our final stop is Herefordshire, where LRE

Accessed directly off the plant’s busy perimeter Eastnor shares Eastnor Castle’s 5200 acres with road, the Jungle Track teleports you to another Land Rover engineers, who have been testing world within 10m. Although now hemmed in by here since 1961. the and factory, housing playing fields, it feels like Instructor Howard White shows us the

a bona fide canopied rainforest. It’s so unbelievably manicured hilltop terrain park and then we head verdant that high-vis-wearing photographer Luc for the wilds. The Range Rover Sport SDV6 HSE

Lacey becomes entirely camouflaged somewhere comes with air springs and TR, but ours also among the leaves. Natural springs mean we’re boasts the On/Offroad pack, adding the likes of gouging muddy tracks as we go, hut the Range low range, TR2,ATPC and rcare-diff.

Rover moves capably up, down and across the The Sport’s more athletic stance means its slippery terrain. off-road vitals can’t quite match its big brother’s,

Like the Discovery, Range Rovers can wade up to but we safely negotiate Frog Alley’s spring-fed an astonishing 900 mm, meaning almost half the quagmires and the wading pools ofWatercourse car can be safely submerged. We enter one of the Road with just a little added care and attention. site’s clear, wide and gently flowing watercourses, White has been quietly assessing my abilities

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and decides that I’m up to descending Castle I line up and eyeball the rear camera. (The door WHAT’S IN A NAME? View Hill, a loose, loamy, 29deg track about 100 mirrors reveal only ferns.) A stiff dose of throttle long - and barely the width of a Range Rover and we’re off. The steering needs frequent, gentle

Sport. He says it’s unrtavigable in the w ret, and adjustments, while my right foot stays bullish. Many LRE obstacles are even in the dry, you’d become a toboggan We get halfway up, then the power u nexpccted ly colloquially named after without HDC. A scrambling Lacey confirms sinks and we’re back on the brakes, hanging in instructors, recalling infamous it’s treacherous on foot, too. our seatbelts. I’m about to concede defeat, but the incidents past, but we struggled to In low range with HDC set to a crawl, the ground Sport revives with a fresh helping of diesel and we glean thegrisly details. disappears as we crest the summit. I need only shoot on up and over the summit. It’s an extremely Rounding ‘Tony's Corner’ at steer, but the sound of manically pumping brake impressive finish. Halewood, Mai Dutton says: “I lines and graunching tyres is unsettling. The car Our tour shows that off-road mg has don’t know the true story behind is working really hard right now. We edge down transformed in the past 70 years, traditional it, but there is obviously a story slowly, but safely, upshifting to second to ease notions such as ‘giving it welly’ rendered somewhere." I ask if he’s being engine braking towards the end. redundant as advanced electronics lend control, diplomatic. “I am,’’ he says,

On the radio, Lacey time, safety and - dare I say - comfort to modern nodding. Phil Sutton lets slip how requests we go again, mud-plugging. It has also been democratised: ‘Gregory’s Hill’ at Solihull got its so I ask White if the car novices can safely tackle challenging terrain, name, but we’re sworn to secrecy. can manage the ascent. while old hands learn how best to harness the Howard White tells me Eastnor “Yep,” he says. “Want latest technology. is home to ‘Paulo’s Panic’ and

to try it in reverse?” As for the Land Rover Experience centres, ‘Alt’s Hole', but won’t elaborate.

I laugh, but he’s not we have barely scratched the surface of those we Before tackling our treacherous joking. I’d sooner reverse visited and any single one of them could have backwards ascent, I suggest that a bendy bus into a phone filled these pages on its own. And the price of “Howard’s Hill’ has a nice ring. “Not box. But the daunting these experiences? From £99 for two people, today," he says, deadpan. challenge is set. that’s pretty democratic, too. □

January 09, 2019 Jaguar Land Rover Global Daily News Briefing 6