Cars You Forgot About: The Land Rover Discovery SVX

Jaguar Land Rover has attempted to reinvent itself a multitude of times since it was cut loose from the Ford mothership in 2008. You might have noticed its most recent attempt late last year – it caused a bit of a fuss.

As part of their last grand reinvention, though, back in 2015, the long-twinned companies tried to push further into the sphere of specialised, limited-run vehicles by launching the SVO – Special Vehicle Operations – division.

In addition to heritage and continuation stuff, SVO would oversee a three-pronged lineup of enhanced versions of JLR’s new cars. There’d be the SVR badge for high-performance stuff, SVAutobiography for ultra-luxe editions, and SVX – that one would be applied to hardcore off-roaders.

With 10 years of hindsight, we can see that some parts of this plan were more successful than others. The SVR badge found its way onto hotted-up F-Types, F-Paces and Range Rover Sports, making lots of shouty supercharged V8 noises along the way. The SVAutobiography name, meanwhile, ended up on the very poshest full-size Range Rovers as well as a rare-groove V8 version of the smaller Velar.

But what about SVX? Why did we never receive a serious off-roader with this badge? Well, it wasn’t for lack of trying.

At the 2017 Frankfurt Motor Show, Land Rover showed off the Discovery SVX, a concept based on the then-new wonky-arsed Discovery 5. Fitted with knobbly off-road tyres, it featured improved approach and departure angles, a raised ride height with long-travel dampers, and lots of chunky-looking underbody cladding.

It also promised to feature Hydraulic Active Roll Control, a first for the Disco, and had special calibrations for the gearbox and the suite of driver assists.

The piece de resistance, though, was the engine: while no production version of the Disco 5 has received a V8, the SVX was to get JLR’s 5.0-litre supercharged eight-pot in 518bhp guise. In other words, it was designed as much for battering across a desert floor as scrabbling up a muddy track.

A limited production run was earmarked for 2018 at JLR’s shiny new SVO Technical Centre near Coventry, and interested parties were invited to register their interest. But then 2018 came and went and everything went a bit quiet on the SVX.

In fact, it wasn’t until 2019 that we had an update, and it wasn’t one we were hoping for: the Discovery SVX. The only reason given was that a decision had been taken not to introduce a V8 to the Disco range full stop, and no V8 meant no SVX. As for why that decision was taken, we can only assume, as is so often the case, that money – or lack thereof – played into it.

So, we were cruelly denied what would have been a luxurious, all-conquering high-speed off-roader from Land Rover. Well, for a while, anyway – we can’t help but think some of the Disco SVX’s spirit lives on in the new Defender OCTA, which combines plush surroundings with truly baffling off-road ability at nearly any speed. Would it have happened without the SVX concept from seven years earlier? Who knows, but we’re very glad the OCTA exists.