The story
The Discovery 4, sold as the LR4 in North America and the Middle East, is a thorough rework of the Discovery 3 rather than a new truck. It keeps the stepped roof, the 113.6-inch wheelbase and the Integrated Body Frame, a monocoque body bolted to a ladder chassis, and adds a new face, a nicer cabin and much better engines. It is the last Discovery built that way. That makes it a seven-seat expedition truck with independent air suspension, a two-speed transfer box and Terrain Response, all for less than a used Land Cruiser. The catch is that it is still a Land Rover, and the bills arrive in plastic.
A FACELIFT THAT WENT DEEP
Land Rover unveiled the Discovery 4 in the summer of 2009 and put it on sale in Britain on 1 September that year; in the US it arrived as the 2010 LR4. The nose, lamps and grille were smoothed to match the 2010 Range Rover and Range Rover Sport, and the dash was redone with a TFT driver's display and simpler switchgear. Most of the money went underneath, though: Range Rover Sport brakes, thicker anti-roll bars, a better ZF six-speed automatic, and Terrain Response retuned with a Sand launch mode and a Rock Crawl mode that brakes gently at walking pace.
The cross-linked air suspension and the electronically locking centre differential carried over from the LR3 (Discovery 3), and a locking rear differential stayed on the options list. Under the body is the same 'Integrated Body Frame' Land Rover introduced in 2004: build the passenger cell and engine bay as a monocoque, then mate it to a ladder frame that carries the gearbox and suspension. It's heavy, at about 5,600 lb for a US V8, but it's strong.
V8, THEN A SUPERCHARGED SIX
In America the LR4 launched with Jaguar Land Rover's new direct-injection 5.0-litre V8, rated at 375 hp and 375 lb-ft, from the same AJ133 family that went into the 2010 Range Rover. Europe mostly got diesels: a 3.0-litre twin-turbo V6 with 600 Nm, sold from the 2011 model year as the SDV6 alongside a single-turbo TDV6, plus a basic 2.7 TDV6 that was dropped for 2011. Diesel Discoveries in Europe also got the ZF eight-speed automatic for 2012, two years before America did.
The 2014 model year changed the US truck more than any facelift did. The V8 gave way to a supercharged 3.0-litre V6 with 340 hp and 332 lb-ft, the six-speed became a ZF eight-speed with stop-start, and a lighter single-speed transfer case became standard. If you wanted low range and the active locking rear differential, you now had to tick the $1,350 Heavy Duty package, which also added a full-size spare. EPA combined economy went from 14 mpg for the V8 to 16 mpg for the V6.
WHAT IT'S LIKE TO OWN ONE
Owners on LandRoverWorld and Expedition Portal tend to tell the same story. The truck is superb off-road and on a long drive, and it will tow 7,716 lb. It also eats brakes, and its cooling system is full of plastic crossover pipes and coolant manifolds that crack between roughly 50,000 and 100,000 miles. Early 5.0 V8s added a timing-chain tensioner problem, covered by Land Rover bulletin LTB00474 for 2010–2012 trucks in a published VIN range. The air suspension, meanwhile, will eventually want a compressor, a strut or a valve block.
None of that makes it a bad buy. It makes it a truck to buy with records, a scan tool and a plan. An Expedition Portal owner put it bluntly: a $14,000 LR4 can need $5,000–8,000 of deferred maintenance in the first year, and the purchase price is only the price of admission. Sort the cooling system and the chains, though, and the LR4 is far more capable on a trail than most luxury SUVs. When Car and Driver lined it up against the Lexus GX 460 and three road-biased rivals in 2011, it finished fourth of five, which says more about the test than the truck.
THE END OF THE LADDER
In March 2012 the one millionth Discovery came off the Solihull line, a Discovery 4, and Land Rover drove it and two sister trucks from Solihull to the Beijing Motor Show, recreating a 1950s overland expedition. That car is now on permanent display at the British Motor Museum in Gaydon. Discovery 4 production ran until 2016; owners report that the US line-up ended with Landmark and HSE Silver trims in the 2016.5 model year. Its successor, the 2017 Discovery, switched to a lighter unitary body and dropped the numeric suffix. That leaves the LR4 as the last Discovery with a separate frame under it, closing a line that began with the 1989 original.
SIDEBAR · JOURNEY OF DISCOVERY
The millionth Discovery takes the long way to Beijing
To mark the millionth Discovery in 2012, Land Rover recreated a 1950s Solihull-to-the-Far-East expedition with Discovery 4s. The convoy crossed Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan into western China, running the desert roads from Kashgar to Korla, the stretch shown at the top of this page. The trip was raising money towards a £1 million target for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.
Along the way G459 WAC, one of the pre-production Discovery 1s later converted into an amphibious vehicle, joined the celebrations at Lake Geneva. The millionth car ended the trip at the Beijing Motor Show and then went on permanent display at the British Motor Museum in Gaydon.
