Land Rover cancels V8-powered Discovery SVX

The SVX nameplate isn't dead, though.

Land Rover traveled to the 2017 Frankfurt auto show to reveal a close-to-production concept named Discovery SVX (pictured). It promised to start building the V8-powered off-roader in 2018, but we're in 2019 and we haven't seen it in showrooms yet. That's because the model has been canceled, the company confirmed.

British magazine Autocar learned the current Discovery will not receive a V8 engine during its life cycle, meaning the SVX we saw in Frankfurt won't reach production. It used Jaguar - Land Rover's ubiquitous 5.0-liter V8, which was supercharged to make 518 horsepower and 461 pound-feet of torque in this application. It was tipped to become the only V8-powered Discovery available.

More importantly, the off-road-friendly Discovery should have inaugurated the SVX sub-brand. Get those thoughts of a 1990s Subaru coupe with weird windows out of your head. In Land Rover-speak, SVX denotes the most off-road capable version of a vehicle. The Discovery gained a lift kit, a hydraulic active roll control system, bigger tires, locking differentials, and skid plates, for example. Autocar reported the SVX nameplate will be used in the future, but it's too early to tell which vehicle will inaugurate it.

All is not well at Jaguar - Land Rover right now. It needs to raise $1 billion in the next 14 months, according to Bloomberg, so it is slashing 4,500 jobs (about 10 percent of its workforce) and canceling capital-intensive projects like the SVX and the Range Rover SV Coupe it planned to sell for $300,000.