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JLR Is Planning To Replace The Aging Discovery With An All New Model
JLR is preparing the sixth generation of the Discovery model, announcing that it will place it in its own “unique territory” and distance it from its Defender sibling, which has “cannibalized” sales.
The current Discovery has been on sale since 2017, making it the oldest model in the Land Rover range. It’s also the weakest seller, with just 16,750 global deliveries last year, almost half that of the Discovery Sport.
Despite Discovery accounting for just 4% of JLR’s total sales, the company remains committed to bringing it back for another generation and will focus efforts on more clearly defining Discovery’s positioning around its “family adventure” values.
Discovery and Defender brand boss Mark Cameron said that the repositioning will have to distance the Discovery from its Defender sibling, which offers comparable refinement and space with a wider range of engines, equipment and body sizes. The Defender’s 110,367 sales in 2023 were more than six times those of the Discovery.
JLR will try to set the Discovery apart by moving it into a new space, possibly adopting some of the MPV’s design elements.
Since it’s starting from a clean slate of design, it could even produce something as radically different from today’s model as the Mk1 Range Rover Evoque was to the Range Rover and Range Rover Sport.
Discovery will become one of four independent brands alongside Range Rover, Defender and Jaguar. The formation of its entity will give the Discovery brand a renewed lease of life, Cameron said, as all four of JLR’s brands are currently inadvertently competing with each other for a shared retail footprint.
“In recreating what Discovery is, we have to make sure it’s in really unique territory,” says Cameron.
JLR will likely build the next-generation Discovery on its versatile MLA platform, which underpins the current flagship Range Rover and can accept both ICE and electric powertrains.
JLR has confirmed plans for electric Land Rovers by 2026 and the Discovery 6 is expected to be one of them.
