The newly-unveiled Land Rover Discovery is rumored to be the first model to come with a special SVX/SVO off-road dedicated performance variant, which should render the aftermarket scene for the model useless.
Now, since the car is brand new, there aren’t any tuners with a special package for it, albeit that’s most likely about to change. It’s just a matter of time before we’ll see gaudy-modified Land Rover Discovery models, but the car maker has its own plan.
In an interview with Top Gear, Land Rover’s design boss Gerry McGovern said that the reason SVO exists is to offer clients a customization program without any compromises:
“One of the reasons we’ve set SVO up is we’ve seen tuners taking 99 percent of our intellectual and creative property and changing a few things – generally not very well – eroding the guarantees and then charging a premium for it.”
Moreover, McGovern said that the program will also offer limitless, bespoke possibilities when it comes to configuring a model, especially as the Discovery and the (future) Defender will be in their element with improved, off-road dedicated components:
“[…] If somebody wants to come along and have something bespoke we can do that. We can do limited editions. What SVO is about is taking a particular car to a particular price point – there’s no limit. There’s the design, the power output, all sorts of things we offer through SVO. And you’re right that with [the Disco] and Defender, it does lend itself to an incredibly rugged, capable vehicle. But as I said, [the standard Disco] is incredibly capable as well. But if people want it to look more overtly rugged, why not?”
Wait, it gets even better, as it appears that there are already a plethora of accessories waiting to be installed on the Discovery:
“We’ve designed a whole array of accessories for [the Disco]. You’ll see this as the launch rolls out. We design them at the very beginning so they’re integrated rather than looking like they’ve been thrown on.”
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