25 Years Of Land Rover Discovery

The Discovery 4. Below the I, II & III models in that order

When Discovery production started late 1989, it became the third model in the LR line up. A few years of settling in led to a growth spurt, peaking in 1995 when a record number of Discos were made. Now 25 years have passed, so I thought it appropriate to look back on the evolution of the vehicle.

The Series I ran until 1998, production amounted to 384,323 (I took 20,000 units off the 1998 figure to give to the Series II). That was a very fine effort for a new model, which took a few years to establish itself.

The Series II followed in the latter part of 1998, running to early 2004. It was similar in appearance to its predecessor, perhaps too much so.

Taking into account the shared year with LR3, (only counting 10,000 units for 2004), 271,026 vehicles were made.

The Series III/IV was a better and more modern looking looking SUV, while retaining an obvious resemblance. The Series III ran from early 2004 until 2009, when replaced by the IV, which is not in my opinion a new model but an upgrade. 414,011 have been made according to my estimation.

The total production as listed is 1,069,360 units. Bear in mind that the 2013 is an estimate, albeit a fairly accurate one. Also, the chart below shows a Discovery commercial vehicle column which is largely empty. This is because while the Discovery has had a small run of CVs, I only have a few years of numbers for them. For that reason, the CV figures are not included in the total figure mentioned above.

Now to explain the chart. Under 'Disco' is production less CVs. 'Tot Prod' is all models made that are classified as private vehicles. '% Tot' represents the percentage of Discovery production compared to the 'Tot Prod' figure. The 'D CV' shows the limited Discovery CV production data I have. Finally, 'LR CV' is production of commercial vehicles, which is not included in 'Tot Prod' figure.

The Discovery model has been a popular and successful model for LR. It seems LR wants to turn the Discovery into a range like Range Rover, making the Freelander part of that. That may be to distance it from the Defender, making that the only Land Rover model, if and when a replacement comes for that. Why can't they leave well alone?

	Disco	Tot Prod	% Tot	D CV	LR CV
1989	3,296	31,803	10%		23,437
1990	23,067	47,261	49%		21,210
1991	19,261	35,673	54%		18,915
1992	24,312	39,743	61%		17,626
1993	35,744	50,524	71%		17,368
1994	54,499	71,758	76%		22,240
1995	69,904	99,533	70%		27,573
1996	66,388	96,894	69%		32,582
1997	59,053	106,929	55%		36,140
1998	48,799	149,324	33%		31,704
1999	54,801	154,327	36%		24,155
2000	56,364	159,997	35%		15,611
2001	41,788	139,005	30%		13,796
2002	43,030	155,412	28%		16,710
2003	45,043	147,545	31%		14,630
2004	41,668	149,764	28%	675	14,090
2005	56,169	175,879	32%		11,747
2006	50,633	175,714	29%		13,663
2007	43,919	232,625	19%	620	2,099
2008	35,035	185,931	19%	350	3,536
2009	20,982	114,596	18%	215	2,128
2010	39,002	182,984	21%	375	5,931
2011	45,742	238,237	19%		2,862
2012	45,161	305,467	15%		6,281
2013	45,700	340,290	13%		6,500

All data is collected by myself and not obtained from LR. Therefore it is as accurate as I can make it, and I believe it is very close to LR official statistics, if they were available.