Boring cabin or not is subjective but practical and useful it definitely is. Space is in abundance up front and in the second row. Leg-, knee- and head-room are superb and so is the boot space. And there is also a third row of seats for the kids. Adults should refrain from trying to fit themselves into the third row. The Disco Sport is as practical as any other Landie, but it doesn’t really feel sporty on the inside.
It looks sporty from the outside and on the inside 1990s have made a comeback, but under the hood, things are more like a mixed bag of goodies. The Sport is powered by the same PSA-FORD-JLR 2.2-litre four-pot turbo diesel. We have seen this engine on other cars from J-LR and, most notably, in the Range Rover Evoque. Since the Sport shares most of the Evoque’s running gear such as the engine, transmission and the Haldex centre coupling, I was expecting a lot from the Sport. Despite sharing the engine with the Evoque, however, the Sport that we tested gets a less powerful state of tune. It churns out only 150 PS and 400 Nm of torque. Transferring the power to the wheels is the cogiest nine-speed automatic transmission from ZF. This combo works well in the Sport despite having less power than the Range Rover Evoque.
One thing that surprised me the moment I pressed the starter button was how quiet this engine was despite being an old diesel motor. At idle, there wasn’t any engine chatter and even when revved, the engine did not emit any ear-hurting noise. The refinement levels are good for a diesel car and the power and torque delivery are quite linear. Smoothness is ever-present and so is the annoyance of the nine-speed ZF box which tends to shift up quite rapidly but doesn’t shift down as quickly as you would want it to. This may not be a problem in the city where speeds are low and there is enough power and torque on the tap. But on the highway this can cause some frustration as you have to wait for the gearbox to shift down and unleash some power so you can overtake that slow-moving truck ahead of you.
