Land Rover built a whopping 181 Discovery Sport prototypes and put 750,000 miles on them. Here's a peek into a rather intense vehicle development program.
You know that the 2015 Discovery Sport will replace the aging LR2 to give you a seven-seat SUV that's pretty capable both on and off road. But what's more exciting is to see how much work it takes to create such a versatile vehicle.
They built 181 prototypes which covered approximately 750,000 miles and completed 11,720 tests during the testing phase from the Arctic to Dubai, at temperatures from -34.6 °F to 124 °F and through waters as deep as 23.6 inches.
Land Rover also sent the Discovery Sport to altitudes as high as 13,123 feet, an the cars had to deal with inclines of 40 degrees and declines of 45 degrees too just to make sure they deserve the Land Rover badge.
At this point, I must tell you that they also teamed up with Virgin Galactic, resulting in a pair of videos in which they try to explain how building a spacecraft is roughly the same as designing a series production SUV. Spoiler alert: it isn't, at all.
Having said that, I would love to push one of these badass prototypes to that limit they are talking about. A few fun hours before they meet the crasher? Come on JLR!
The Discovery Sport will be revealed globally on September 3rd.