I drove a Land Rover Discovery for a while. It was a very nice car, and very well built (it was made by BMW at the time).

That's a damning indictment on the build quality of American cars then. The Disco and it's sister the Freelander is appalling put together compared to most European and Japanese cars. Bit are always falling off them and the electrics failing.

Some of the design is truely awful as well, I never did work out how to change the rear light bulbs on the one I drove, the last two "seats" (you won't catch me sitting in them) completely blocked the access to the panel where the bulbs were.

The Disco has never really "made" by BMW either. Sure BMW owned them for a time, but they never really had and significant impact of the production of the existing models, which is why Rover/LandRover basically went bust in the end.

The Range Rover however is a different story, it was designed in Germany by BMW, which is why Ford actually had to pay BMW to take LandRover off of their hands. A stark comparison to the rest of Rover where BMW had to pay the new owners hundreds of millions of dollars to take on the remains.

Rover got the last laugh though, as six months after BMW handed over ownership they suddenly managed to magic three new MG models out of thin air. Someone at Rover had clearly been busy working on something in their spare time without telling BMW...

Those turns at 40mph felt like I'd tip over

You didn't have the model with the trick air suspension then. The air suspension was very clever, so much so that I have seen a Disco with it fitted navigate a tight slalom course at 40mph without hardly leaning on the turns at all.