Exclusive: next Land Rover Discovery will be mid-engined sports car

Today, British 4×4 specialist Land Rover has announced the next Land Rover Discovery will be a lightweight sports car. 

Tired of all the traditional sports car makers – Ferrari, Lamborghini, Alpine, Aston Martin and now even Lotus – muscling onto its patch with big lifestyle SUVs, Land Rover has decided to beat them all at their own game. 

“We reckon there’s a real gap in the market for Land Rover to deliver a purists’ driving machine,” a Land Rover spokesman told TopGear.com. 

“As all of the sports car brands scramble to copy our Range Rover Sport, we’ve calculated sales of a halo sports car could top almost eight units per year, making it twice as popular as the Evoque Cabriolet.”

So why the change of direction for the deluxe Disco-4×4?

“Turns out no-one really wanted a massive, wonky-arsed, school run tank. But we realised if we just flipped the platform around, we had the perfect basis for a mid-engined, 4WD sports car. With a wonky face.”

Land Rover HQ has secured government permission to concrete over its local Cotswold off-road trails to build a private test track for shaking down its new 911-chaser. “We looked into hiring Silverstone, but it was block-booked by Aston Martin desperately trying to make a DBX out-lap a Valkyrie,” claimed a source.

Company insiders also say they’ve been paying close attention to social media accounts upset about the new Lotus Eletre and Ferrari Purosangue while deciding the Discovery’s spec list. “It’ll have a manual gearbox, a hard-crank start, a manual choke and weigh less than one of Gordon Murray’s teabags,” promised powertrain chief Ian Fotainment-Meltdown. 

“We’ve also recoded our usual Terrain Response software so that instead of setting the car up for whatever surface it’s on, the new Discovery will wildly oversteer even in a straight line. People who are definitely going to buy this model with real money are fed up with all these safe, user-friendly, reliable modern sports cars.”

The new Discovery aims to launch on 1st April next year, in time to battle Singer’s reimagined Cayenne. “It’s been a real challenge for us,” admitted Land Rover. “It’s taken us since Christmas just to get the rear numberplate in the right place.”