Motoring Alan Judd
LAND ROVER
The Eastnor Castle estate, Herefordshire, has been in the same family since the 16th century, though the castle itself was built in 1812-20 by Smirke and Pugin. It is Land Rover’s favoured off-road proving ground.
Eastnor’s association with Land Rover began in 1953, when the owner invited Maurice Wilks, progenitor of the Land Rover, to test his Series One on some rough stuff. Land Rover now has a facility there, comprising fifty vehicles, workshops, a reception centre and a daunting range of obstacles to wheeled progress. New or potential buyers may be invited for expert off-road tuition – a chance to unlearn years of tarmac conformity. The Duchess of Cambridge was recently filmed rock-climbing in a Discovery Sport at Land Rover’s similar but smaller course at Solihull, despite her pregnancy.
I went with a friend who is considering buying a Discovery Sport. Our excellent instructor Clive, a former Marine and fireman, talked us through it and then took us round the course. It’s a mixture of winding woodland tracks on rock, mud, roots, earth and water, with ascents so steep that all you see beyond the bonnet are treetops and clouds, followed by falls so precipitous that you can’t see the bottom until you’re in it. Clive lucidly explained and demonstrated what each of the car’s electronic gizmos does, showing how much harder it is to manage without them. We climbed concrete steps, went half-sideways deep into a bowl, one rear wheel three feet off the ground. Then we crested something called the peanut, which seems to tip you at all angles at once and has the sky doing things you’d normally expect only in aerobatics. But we never toppled. Nor did we stall in the water trough that followed.
The first thing you notice about this new Discovery is the ease and tolerance of the automatic transmission and unobtrusive power of its two-litre diesel engine. To get round, you just take it slowly, point it where you want to drive and go easy on the throttle; the car does the rest. Clive warned us about the curiously magnetic trees nearest the tracks – their gouges bear witness to the over-hasty and heavy-footed – and demonstrated how, if you don’t know where your wheels are pointing or the car is heading, the screen will show you.
Most impressive, perhaps, was the ATPC (all-terrain progress control) mode. Set that, and the car creeps forward by itself, accelerating on hills, decelerating and braking on descent and constantly switching power to whichever wheel has the best traction. All you do is keep your feet clear of the pedals and steer. It’s counterintuitive but you get used to it.
My old Defender, with its mechanical differential lock, low-range gearbox and no electronic gizmos at all, would have coped with all this, but I’d have finished the course dripping with sweat and feeling thoroughly beaten up. That’s partly what we love about them, of course.
But modern Land Rovers are designed to take the strain themselves. Granted, this course is designed to show their strengths and, in the real world, you can get a tractor stuck in a flat field if the ground is soft enough (I’ve done it). But, at Eastnor, the vehicles do more hard off-road stuff in a week than most will do in a lifetime. Engineers regularly deconstruct them to see what’s worn and there are plans to expand the facility to include Jaguar buyers.
Discovery Sports start at £28,355. Ours, with options, was about £42,000. The three I’d specify are the mud-and-snow tyres, the ATPC and the glass roof – so long as you’re not frightened to see more ground than sky through the last of those.