World of Land Rovers
THERE seems to be a bit of confusion as to whether the new Defender will be built in Slovenia or Slovakia, as in the letter from David Thomas of Swansea in the January 2020 LRM. I don’t know if people think they are the same place.
Slovakia, where the Defender and the Discovery are to be built, if they’re not already, is the eastern half of what used to be Czechoslovakia, just across the Tatra mountains from eastern Poland.
Slovenia, which used to be part of Yugoslavia, is on the Adriatic coast just across from Venice, more or less.
Slovakia builds lots of cars for various people, including Kia and Hyundai, because they have a long history of engineering things like tanks for the Russians, which Slovenia hasn’t.
As for the Britishness of Land Rovers, when working on my Freelander 2, I’ve noticed that: • The window glass is Fuyao, which sounds
Chinese to me
• The front wiper mechanism is from Germany • The rear wiper mechanism is from Spain
• The fuse boxes are from the USA
• The automatic gearbox is Aisin Warner, which sounds Japanese
Who knows where the rest comes from? I know that the body and the engine are from this country, because there has been an article about the plant on Merseyside in a previous issue of LRM, and assembly is carried out there, but springs, hubs, brakes, seats, dashboards?
All this really points out the fact that most of the previous suppliers of car parts – Lucas, Girling, Lockheed, and so on – who used to supply parts are long gone. This means parts
have to be sourced overseas, but this is true for every manufacturer, so Land Rover are just doing what every other car maker in the world has to do to enable them to survive economically.
I’ve got to say that if I had the money I’d buy a new Defender, no matter where it’s made, because the concept and design are British (it could be, of course, that the lead designer is not from these shores, in the same way that the lead designer of the original VW Golf was British…), so people should be glad that the car has finally come to fruition, and probably will be able to afford one in a decade or two.
Alan Mordey
Leamington Spa
Thanks for the geography lesson, Alan, and we take your point regarding global sourcing of car parts, but we can assure you the top designer at JLR, one Gerry Mcgovern, is as British as they come. In fact he hails from just up the road from you and has a Brummie accent stronger than Jasper Carrott’s – Ed.