Land Rover Discovery Tackles Russia

Over one million Land Rover Discoverys have been built since its 1989 debut. The Discovery (known as the LR4 here in the States) is a seven-seat off-roader capable of going just about anywhere and doing just about anything. As senior features editor Jonny Lieberman points out in the latest episode of Epic Drives, not many places can fully test the Disco’s capabilities. So Lieberman went to Russia to put the Discovery through its paces.

In the one-millionth Land Rover Discovery, Lieberman travels from the Russian town of Belgorod, up through Moscow, before heading back down to Volgograd. Though long, Lieberman’s 1000-mile drive represents only a small part of the 8000-mile “Journey of Discovery” from Birmingham in the U.K., to Beijing in China. The Journey of Discovery pays homage to the 1955 Land Rover expedition that attempted the same route in a duo of Defenders, only to wind up in Singapore instead of China due to politics.

Lieberman’s expedition through Russia included stops at a Soviet-era car museum, a stay in a dilapidated hotel, and a drive on Moscow’s Red Square – an act almost inconceivable when the Discovery first went into production and Cold War tensions were high.

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