How the new Land Rover Discovery Sport was designed

Land Rover’s design boss, Gerry McGovern, says that with the new Discovery Sport his designers set out to create a luxurious environment with “unparalleled levels of versatility”.

We talked to McGovern about the thought processes, design ideas and reasoning behind the new seven-seat Land Rover Discovery Sport:

What takes precedence in the Discovery Sport, great design or great capability?   

"I’d say the capability was our killer priority. Others have great design, but Land Rovers have always had class leading functionality and always will. The big trick is in putting the two things together well. We’ve spent four years working out the best way to do it."

What were the biggest design challenges?

"The Discovery Sport had to be bigger than a Freelander, but it also needed a sporty silhouette that disguised a cavernous interior. That was a pretty hard thing to do.

"What’s more, it had to look like it was capable of what it can do, which can be difficult with an off-roader whose capabilities are as broad as this one. The design’s got to be embedded in the car. It can’t just be the icing on the cake."

Did that mean you had to make this big-selling model more generalist than other Land Rovers?

"We discussed that aspect a lot. You don’t want to lose your design roots, but equally, there’s no point producing a “Marmite” design and end up not selling enough cars. We opted to give the Discovery Sport a good deal of universal appeal; to make it look really good but try also to convey that it was really capable."

Does that mean future full-size Discoverys will be more generalist? 

"Not necessarily. Their styling has always been quite polarising, yet they’ve been successful in the market. We did try expressing Land Rover Discovery 4 values in a Sport, but it didn’t really work. So, since there had never been a Discovery in this size before, we felt we had permission to jump away a bit."

Murray Dietsch, Land Rover’s director of programmes, has the major responsibility of replacing Land Rover’s million-selling Freelander with a Discovery Sport that customers will like even better. He explains the key steps:

How did you decide how to change the Freelander?

"First of all, we took a long look at what the customers needed. The first thing we learned was that it wasn’t going to be so easy beating the Freelander: we’re talking about a model that scored 47,000 sales in 2008, its best year.

"But we decided our customers needed something with a bit more capability, and a bit more room – but was still compact. That was the recipe."