GARY PUSEY
AS everyone knows, the African elephant has a gestation period of 22 months, the longest of any mammal. But the frilled shark takes 42 months to give birth and a certain deep-sea octopus (Graneledone boreopacifica, since you’re asking) was monitored guarding its eggs for no fewer than 53 months before they hatched. But they pale into insignificance compared with how long it took Land Rover to give birth to the L663. Of course, it depends on when you think the replacement for the real Defender was initially conceived, and we’ve all tended to focus on the 44 months between the end of real Defender production in January 2016 and the grand reveal of its successor, the unsurprisingly-named new Defender, in September. But the reality is that its origins go back far longer than that, and it easily trumps the poor old frilled shark and that deep-sea octopus.
And if you count the various phantom pregnancies over the years like the SD5 and the DC100, and the many studies and projects that were never more than a twinkle in the eye, you can easily get as far back as the 1970s.
So whichever way you look at it, it’s been a long wait, marked by what must be the longest ‘teaser’ campaign in motoring history with camouflaged vehicles popping up all over the world, leaked pictures of the interior and, fascinatingly, the appearance online of what were supposed to be illicit snapshots taken during internal JLR presentations. And then, a few days before the official launch at the Frankfurt Motor Show, there was the leaked photo of an apparently undisguised car taken on the set of the new Bond film. Old cynic that I am, I can’t help wondering whether all these ‘leaks’ were actually masterminded by the company to help keep the pot boiling.
Anyway, the new Defender is with us now and you’ll have formed your own opinions. Me, I think it’s a very impressive baby and there’s a great deal to like, not least the many recognisable Defender styling cues: it does look like a Defender and isn’t a pastiche of a D3 or D4, as some commentators expected it to be. We all knew the new vehicle would lose the distinctive face of the original and it has, inevitably acquiring something more consistent with Professor Mcgovern’s house style.
No surprises either with the initial choice of two familiar models that are a nod to the past, namely the 90 and 110, although the actual wheelbases are 101.8 and 118.9 inches respectively. Land Rover has done this before, of course, because the original 90’s wheelbase was really 92.9 inches. But that was a bit of a mouthful for the marketing department, so it was rounded down to 90. But why not call the new 90 a 100? That was after all the wheelbase of the best Land Rover that Land Rover never made, as well as the wheelbase of the original Range Rover.
It’s undoubtedly more comfortable and luxurious than the old Defender and JLR is clearly pushing the model further upmarket, which ties in with the Discovery encroaching on what were previously Range Rover levels of refinement, and the full-fat Range Rover moving ever upwards into the stratosphere.
There’s still too much on-board tech for my taste but it probably needs to be there nowadays in order to sell the car in the required volumes. My favourite line in the press pack is ‘the data connection replaces the traditional toolkit’!
We all know that for donkeys’ years the vast majority of real Defenders were bought as lifestyle statements and never went near a wet field, let alone a greenlane, a challenging off-road course, or a crossing of the Sahara. That’s exactly the market that JLR is targeting with the new vehicle, underpinned of course by the comforting thought that if, as a new owner, you woke up one morning and decided to drive to Tamanrasset in your new Defender, you know the vehicle can do it. And you can bet the company will drop the ‘new’ bit within the first year. The L663 will be known simply as ‘the Defender’, just like all the other utility Land Rovers built since 1948!
It’s not going to be cheap, though, with the base models starting at around £40,000 and rising to £76,000 for the top-of-the-range version. JLR is a maker of premium vehicles and the new Defender is exactly that. I’ve just been reading a review of Toyota’s Land Cruiser Commercial which is powered by a four-cylinder 2.8-litre turbodiesel with manual gearbox, low-ratio, a push-button diff lock, steel wheels, and a vast load space. The writer described it as ‘a new Defender that just happens to have a Toyota badge on it’, and it comes with a price tag of £27,561 before VAT.
And no doubt we will soon be introduced to Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s Projekt Grenadier; he probably waited for JLR to launch the new Defender first so he can see what he’s up against. The problem for you and me, of course, is that neither Grenadier nor Toyota Commercial are Land Rovers. And to us that matters. A lot.
And one other thing. As soon as that deep-sea octopus saw its dedication and persistence pay off and watched all its little baby octopuses hatch, it promptly rolled over and died. I hope we shouldn’t read anything into that…
“My favourite line in the press pack is ‘the data connection replaces the traditional tool kit’”