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Acceleration feels sluggish, and the SUV isn’t the most agile handler around, but there’s decent power for off-roading and towing reaches 4,409 pounds. Power hits all four wheels through a nine-speed automatic transmission. Every Discovery Sport comes with a turbocharged 2.0-liter four-cylinder engine making 246 horsepower and 269 pound-feet of torque. The 2023 Discovery Sport comes in four configurations: S, S R-Dynamic, SE and SE R-Dynamic. Still, the Discovery Sport has aged well and as Land Rover’s cheapest vehicle, it’s a good entry-level way to saddle up English-style. The downside is that despite receiving a major refresh in 2019 it’s now also one of the oldest compact luxury crossovers around, and time does march on. This is despite the fact that it’s Land Rover’s oldest model, now in its tenth model year. It looks very much like the much pricier Discovery, Range Rover and Range Rover Sport but costs far less while offering the real off-road talent the company is famous for. These ratings are a good sign for the eventual American crash testing for the new Range Rovers, and certainly, they should make any American Range Rover buyer more than confident in the safety of their newest purchase.The best things about the Land Rover Discovery Sport have to do with how well it upholds the adventurous brand’s ethos.
#2021 LAND ROVER DISCOVERY SAFETY RATING DRIVER#
The Range Rover lines handle this with technology like Autonomous Emergency Braking, Lane Keep Assist, Rear Collision Monitor, and Driver Condition Response. Hitting a person or a cyclist might cause minimal damage to the vehicle, but it puts the pedestrian in a world of hurt more than being inside a vehicle in any car crash in any car built in decades. With that space largely conquered, new technology especially focuses on pedestrian safety. Early ADAS systems focused on other vehicles and avoiding collisions with them. Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) systems are the latest word in safety, and their sensing and beeping and chiming and automatic reacting are the future of driving. The next frontier of vehicle safety, though, is as much about preventing accidents as anything - and it's also focused on the people outside the vehicle. Perhaps the most famous recent example of this in the Land Rover sphere is the video of a new Defender 110 rolling over six times at highway speed, ending up an absolute total loss - but the passengers walked away. In modern car design, much more than preserving the vehicle as a whole, the intent is to make sure that the occupants and their space are not damaged or intruded upon. In the Range Rover videos, you can see how the vehicle sacrifices its extremities to preserve the cabin. Though a modern Land Rover may be a write-off after a crash easier than an older one, each successive generation has been more and more a safe haven in a crash for the occupants. Watching the videos released by Euro-NCAP makes it clear the huge strides that have been made by Land Rover, and indeed all automakers, over the past few decades. The five-star ratings account for "overall excellent performance in crash protection and well equipped with comprehensive and robust crash avoidance technology." Range Rover Sport comes in at 85% adult occupants, 85% child occupants, 69% vulnerable road users, and 82% safety assist. The Range Rover scored 84% for adult occupants, 87% for child occupants, 72% for vulnerable road users, and 82% for safety assist. Watching the tests for both vehicles, it's clear that both of these vehicles are incredibly safe in a crash. The new platform uses mixed metals, instead of the almost-entirely aluminum D7 platform. The new Range Rover is 50% stiffer than the outgoing model Range Rover Sport is 35% stiffer. The new Range Rover and Range Rover Sport are the first two Land Rovers to utilize the Modular Longitudinal Architecture (MLA) platform, which is replacing the D7 platform as Land Rover’s primary full-size chassis. So although you have to keep in mind that there are sometimes slightly different safety features for different markets, a good Euro-NCAP score for a global car like Land Rover's products is a good guide to how well it will score on the American tests.
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The European test also has a larger focus on how the vehicle impacts pedestrians and cyclists in a crash with the vehicle in question. However, the European test puts a far higher emphasis on the functionality of assisted and augmented safety systems, like emergency braking and blind spot monitoring systems, which play a major role in new car safety. The Euro-NCAP test isn't technically recognized in the United States, which uses the IIHS and NHTSA NCAP (New Car Assessment Program) instead.
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