Whitley, West Midlands - At first glance it seems like a contradiction in terms, but there’s more method to the madness that is the Land Rover Discovery Commercial than you’d think.
Released in the United Kingdom this week, it’s a standard Disco with the second and third rows of seats deleted in favour of a cavernous 1536 litre load bay, 1635mm long, 939mm high and 1411mm wide, finished in tough plack plastic and accessed by a power-operated tailgate.
Available with either the 177kW two-litre SD4 or the 190kW three-litre TD6 turbodiesel, each driving all four wheels via an automatic transmission and high/low-range transfer box, and with suspension uprated to cope with heavy loads, UK prices range from £48 695 (R854 000) to £59 995 (R1 052 000).
From the outside, it’s a standard Discovery, with tinted side windows to curtain off the load bay, and the driver and front passenger space ahead of the safety barrier is as upmarket as the seven-seater versions - the Delivery Disco is available with either engine in S, SE and ultra-luxury HSE trim.
The concept is outrageous, and Jaguar Land Rover SA would be nuts to bring it to South Africa, but it would make a certain amount of sense in image-obsessed Europe, for deliveries of of luxury goods for retailers such as Dunhill or Fortnum & Mason.
As a launch promo, upmarket florist Bloom and Wild used a Delivery Disco to bring 300 miniature Christmas trees from its nursery in the Netherlands to Britain. Maybe JLR should paint one in bright red and deliver it to the North Pole…