Smarticus
Member Since: 01 Jan 2005
Location: Northumberland
Posts: 655
 
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| Weight a minute & NCAP result |
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Does anyone know why the Disco 3 weighs so much more than other vehicles in its class ? The Disco has a kerb weight of 2,718 kgs, which is almost 30% more than the Volvo XC90 (which weighs 2,113 kgs). Even the Range Rover weighs less than a Disco 3 at 2,570 kgs.
Last year I attended a launch event for the Disco 3 when the chief Land Rover designer was showing off the new vehicle. I asked him "whether the design team agreed that a key measure of success in designing a new vehicle was the ability to keep the weight down, and in this regard the Disco 3 was not a great design ?". His response was that the weight of the Disco 3 was higher than the design team wished, but that it was necessary to add a lot of heavy metal to the design (particularly at the rear) as they wanted to achieve a NCAP 5 star rating. Apparently the 3rd row seats are so close to the rear of the vehicle that in a rear end crash these seats would fail the NCAP 5 star criteria without substantial structural strength (hence weight) in the rear chassis. I also suspect that the "dual chassis" design gives great stiffness but at a substantial weight penalty, and the cost of using more of the strong but light metals would have been prohibitive. So Landrover sacrificed weight for saftey, stiffness and cost.
Having said that, I cannot recall seeing the NCAP results for the Disco 3 yet ? Has anyone seen these, and did Land Rover achieve their target of 5 stars ? Disco 4 TDV6HSE
Defender 200TDi CSW
RR Evoque
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 28th Mar 2005 9:36 am |
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Outrageous
Member Since: 10 Jan 2005
Location: New Hampshire, USA
Posts: 44
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I didn't know there was a crash rating scheme for third row seats.
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| 28th Mar 2005 3:47 pm |
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