OK, not quite: almost a month, and over 1,000 miles later, including a 800 mile weekend in Wales, I’ve formed a more detailed opinion of the differentces between driving a Discovery and a Range Rover.
Bear in mind I’m comparing a 10 year old, 125,000 mile vehicle, with a 3 year old, 55,000 mile one.
The Range Rover handling, even with the Koni shocks, is barge-like compared to the Disco with ACE. I’d had some of the bushes replaced on the rangie, but I it wasn’t this tight even when new-to-me. At the other end of the scale, some local speed bumps that were smooth at 25-30mph in the Rangie feel like a real crash-bang-up-and-over in the Disco.
The other big thing is that the V8 in the Rangie was obviously very, very tired. The Td5 is tardy until the turbo comes on line at about 1,800 rpm, but is actually pretty snappy if you can keep it up there – actual driving response seems as good as the V8 unless you really were pushing along. Another difference is that the Rangie, if you were pushing along, needed hard braking into the corner and foot to the floor once you got there to level it through the corner and beyond. The lower power, turbo, and better handling of the Disco leads to more of “keep it going, don’t brake more than you absolutely have to” style of driving – cornering faster but more smoothly.
In terms of comfort, they’re very comparable. The Disco has all the creature comforts, though I notice the B post is much closer to my right shoulder than I’m used to.
I think the way to characterise the difference is that the Discovery II is a nice, comfortable car. The Rangie is a luxury car.
Having said all of that, I had three choices open to me (assuming I still wanted a LandRover!):
1) Throw £5,000 and at least a week, full time, at doing everything I really wanted to do the the Range Rover: engine rebuild, new bushes all round, detail clean the interior, update the LPG to sequential injection, blend motors, trace the noise from the AC condensor, ….. the list goes on. And then persuade the company that the work I’d done basically made it a new car. And still be concerned about what I’d missed.
2) Spend upwards of £22,000 + trade in on an L322, Disco III, or Freelander. I could have done that, but it would have cleaned out thefinancial reserves.
3) Spend £12k + trade in on a Disco II Td5.
With those choices, I’m happy that I made the right decision. I like my Discovery, though I don’t quite have the big grin that I got when I first owned the Range Rover.