I picked up my new 5 seat Discovery SD4 HSE with active rearlocking diff, TPMS, drive pro pack and surround camera system a few weeks agoand would like to give my impressions so far. Before this I owned a D3 for 11years and before that had a 98 100series & 97 80 series, 93 D1, 90 4runnerand 84 Hilux.

The 2 litre motor holds top gear much better than the old2.7 even though its higher geared and the cruise control reacts a lot betternot letting speed drop any more than 1 or 2 kph, the D3 would drop 5 kph thenchange down 1 or 2 gears unless you accelerated to stop the speed drop . Onceon the road you hardly hear the motor much better than most diesels that I havebeen in especially 4 cylinders.

So far, I have average 8.13 l/100km which include trip fromTamworth to Queanbeyan and trip to Sydney and back from Queanbeyan and like theD3 the trip computer is about 1 l/km optimism. The D3 would have got about 10l/100km for similar trips for comparison.

You do notice the increase in turning circle as youexperience full lock a lot more and the rounded shape make it’s a bit more difficultto determine the extremities, it will be interesting when I go off road.

I knew I was going to have problems putting a draw systembecause rear opening is lower but also under the false floor there is a lot of electricalcabling restricting what can done as well. At the moment I plan to install 2draws with a 35 40 litre fridge beside them and also going to make it easy to removefridge to allow access to battery, have not finalise location of battery or water tank.

Overall, it’s a nice quite drive with plenty of power andgood handling, I think it handles a lot better than the D3 but you arecomparing with a 11 year old car.
Haven’t had off road yet, waiting for 18” compomotive wheelsI don’t think I will risk the 20” wheels on anything too difficult.