Gerry McGovern doesn’t believe in fairy tales. I’ve arrived in the Land Rover design director’s light and spacious Gaydon office desperate to hear the full, emotionally charged saga of how he and his design crew created a new Defender to replace the company’s 1948 icon – and the first comment he can offer is that it all happened “quite a long time ago”.
This is true, of course. One well-known fact about modern mass manufacture is that all the really important stuff about market positioning, major dimensions, mechanical layout and styling gets decided anything up to five years before a model hits production. Just the same, as the new Defender goes on sale this month for deliveries next spring, I’m desperate to hear as much sentimental stuff as McGovern can remember – especially about the mystical influence of a secret concept from 2015 called LR1, whose existence was never publicly shared…
Sixty-two-year-old McGovern affects a tough-guy persona that is both well rehearsed and anchored in reality: his favourite gym pursuit is boxing and he has biceps as thick as other people’s thighs. “People keep asking me if the new Defender is my legacy,” he says with more than a hint of weariness. “The answer’s no. I’m a professional designer and I’m always looking for the next project. As it happens, our next big job is the Range Rover replacement and that’s just about done and dusted…”
Luckily, beyond the bravura display of toughness he has been cultivating all his design life – no doubt as a way of prevailing against engineers and bosses who might otherwise seek to limit the flights of his design fancy – McGovern reverts to what he really is: one of the UK’s great design leaders with a rare and sophisticated eye for beauty in cars, even when they must be tall and boxy.
His powerful influence has shaped most Land Rovers and Range Rovers of the past 25 years (this despite a five-year period working at Lincoln-Mercury in the US), but he doesn’t yearn for the sketchpad the way other design bosses purport to do. “We have a fantastic design team,” he explains. “My job is to edit every detail of what we do. I’ll be in the studio after everyone’s gone home, seeing what works and what doesn’t.”
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“A few people criticised the poor rear vision...”
Or in other words, form over function! Who cares if you can see sod all out the back window as long as it looks like what Gerry wanted it to look like?
Discovery 5
I think the Discovery 5's (and to some extend the revised Discovery Sport's) biggest problem is that they're migrating away from their natural user base. The D5 and new DS are becoming too luxury inside, and that's a problem when your main market is 'active' families. If it's too nice inside it becomes less practical and as a result less versatile.
Having looked around a new Defender, I find myself much more interested as it's a far more usable interior than the Discovery family is becoming, even though I probably would never need it's sheer ruggedness or (hopefully) ability.
For me the Disocvery cars should be between the outright ability of Defender and the luxury of Range Rover, with the focus on versatility and practicality. No I don't want something that is too utilitarian as it has to be comfortable in daily use, but I don't want soft touch fabrics on door panels that get kicked, or soft plush carpets to soak in the mud etc. from children's feet.
It feels like the only real difference between a D5 and a RRS is the ability to carry 7 adults. And with the new DS and Evoque it's just the interior space with both feeling equally plush and pretty much sharing interior quality. That just feels wrong.
As it stands, you'd have to question why anyone would now buy the D5 over a Defender unless carrying 7 adults (with no luggage) was your number one criteria, and that seems like a bit of a niche market....
OH SHUT UP - all those
OH SHUT UP - all those moaning tools that harp on about the Discovery have never driven one, on and off road, try it then complain, you wont, the D5 is a far superior car to the old school D4, it was old and past it, you are just going on about its looks, well, thats nothing, its the actual car thats superior, the interior, is far more comfortable, has better on road and off road manners compared to D3/D4, we wont even go to D1/D2 - as they were already past it when they were launched.
The D5 Rear, whats the moaning about that for, it has a raising tailgate with a drop down level for sitting on, and you can we have had four full sized adults on ours and it just takes the weight with ease, there is far more room inside and the ability of the car off road is so far removed from the old D3/D4 its like a millenium has passed.
So before you continually harp on about it, try looking at the facts, and that will hopefully stop the same people moan moan moan - go get a life, you clearly have no idea what you are on about.
jonboy4969 wrote:
I'm sure the actual car is superior in many ways, but, as it is a more modern replacement for Disco 4 shouldn't that be taken as read? But come on, who really wants to spend that much money and have to drive around in something that looks so amateur. JLR really took their eyes off the ball with Disco 5, its schoolboy error stuff getting the basic proportions so wrong: It didn't have to be like this, as JLR's other designs show. At least a Rodius had value on its side.
catnip wrote:
I’ve seen the D5 many times in shopping malls etc and on the road, and really the looks are not that bad. Haters here will hate irrespective of the car’s positive attributes, and that’s why I can’t take most seriously here.
Poor sales are a matter for another conversation, but that could be down to any number of factors besides looks.
So we're not allowed to say
Eh!
Did you fail to notice the article was about design and nothing to do with ability ?
And I am pretty sure the Disco 5 sales are considered to be very disappointing. So, if the cars abilities are brilliant there must be some other reason for poor sales. Want to try to guess why.
@ old but nit yet dead
You made my point for me ...Thx.
Totally agree with you and FM8. They got it badly wrong with D5 and privately, within JLR, this is acknowledged.
With regard to the Defender, that plastic wart (which is mandatory on 110/130), on the sides would have to go.....I mean why would you (create a blind spot for absolutely no good reason). I will be keen to look at this in the flesh to see how possible it is to lever/cut this off and consign it to the dustbin of daft ideas.
jonboy4969 wrote:
Most of those 'moaning' are referring to the styling, which is challenging. Why would one have to drive one to discuss its styling?
This is an article, and a
As much as I suspect he'd like to say he did, McGovern had no input on the vehicles technical or dynamic abilities.