Winning at the money game
High Defender prices have worked to Mr Pusey’s advantage
IT’S all change on the daily driver front. The 2014 Defender 90 station wagon has gone. It’s been replaced by SYD, my 1990 Range Rover. I’m already missing the 90 that I’ve thoroughly enjoyed driving for the past year, and it’s sad to have lost the right to the wonderful Defender wave, but I’m sure there’s as much pleasure to be had with a Range Rover Classic wave. I’ll tell you once I’ve actually seen one on the road to wave at. So far it is nearly a thousand miles since SYD replaced the 90, and I haven’t so much as glimpsed another Range Rover Classic yet.
I’d become more and more astonished by what I’d been hearing and reading about Defender values, and when an LRM reader told me he’d sold his 2012 110 for twice what he’d got it insured for, I decided to investigate. Two things seem to be driving the incredible rise in prices. One, of course, is the enduring attraction and desirability of the original Defender despite what (if we are honest) we would describe as its ‘endearing imperfections’. The other is the huge leap in secondhand car prices generally, driven by the fact that you can’t buy the new vehicle
you want right now, because the manufacturer can’t make it. In today’s automotive electrickery wonderland a shortage of semiconductor chips means few manufacturers are able to build enough cars to meet demand. There is, for example, a backlog of 125,000 orders for the new Defender but without the required chips (there are lots of them in a new Defender) JLR cannot build the cars.
Desperate buyers are resorting to paying a premium for a used example of the car they can’t buy new. I know someone who recently sold his four-month-old Defender 110 back to the main dealer he bought it from, and trousered a £15,500 profit in the process.
I’m sure the silliness will end pretty swiftly once chips are available in sufficient quantities again, which is expected to be later in 2022. But whether the bubble in ‘real’ Defender prices will burst at the same time, I really don’t know. I’m not sure that what we’re witnessing is sustainable and, as we all know, bubbles have a habit of bursting at some stage.
I decided to have a chat with the
independent Land Rover specialist who sold me the 90 a year ago and float the idea that I might be prepared to part with it. Quick as a flash he bit my arm off, a deal was done and I got back what I’d paid for it. They cannot get enough real Defenders in good, low-mileage condition to meet demand. They even sent a truck on a 400 mile round trip to pick it up. It is the best value year’s motoring I’ve ever had, and with the money I got back on the 90 I can put a lot of E5 into a thirsty 3.9 V8 and still be quids-in.
SYD is over 30 years old, though, and although it has been rebuilt you always have a slight doubt about relying on a vehicle of that age as your daily driver. It has behaved itself so far, barring an electrical failure that left a passenger window stuck in the down position on what was at that point the coldest night of the year. But nothing that a black bin liner and a roll of duct tape couldn’t fix for a day or two. Fearing it might be a failed motor it was a relief to discover (eventually) that it was the switch. A liberal application of switch cleaner had the window whirring up and down, and I am falling in love with SYD all over again!