Land Rover Kills Plans For Discovery SVX Hardcore Off-Roader

Land Rover has ditched plans to put the hardcore Discovery SVX into production.

Unveiled as a concept at the 2017 Frankfurt Auto Show as an off-road focused version of the latest-generation Discovery, the vehicle was meant to spearhead Jaguar Land Rover’s new SVX sub-brand dedicated towards extreme off-road vehicles.

Sales of the production version were initially set to commence by the end of 2018. According to Autocar, Land Rover said that the Discovery SVX won’t hit the market because the concept’s 5.0-liter supercharged V8 will no longer find its way into the popular SUV.

This isn’t the first model Land Rover has axed in recent weeks. Towards the end of January, the British automaker also confirmed that the Range Rover SV Coupe, a luxurious £240,000 two-door targeting the Bentley Bentayga and Rolls-Royce Cullinan, was scrapped despite already having been revealed in production guise.

In this case, the company said that it would instead refocus its resources and investment on its next generation of products. We suspect that financial reasons may also be a factor in the decision to cull the Discovery SVX.

Last year was a difficult one for the British manufacturer. In the final quarter of 2018, JLR posted a pre-tax loss of $4.4 billion. It also shifted just 144,602 vehicles between October and December 2018, down from the 154,447 it sold during the same period in 2017. This was also the third consecutive quarterly loss for the company. One of the key factors in declining sales figures is a dramatic drop in demand from China, which was caused in large part by the quality issues of locally manufactured vehicles.