NEW DEFENDER
You’ve decided about the looks, but can the new Defender handle life on the farm and traffic in town? Proper British conditions
Time to discover if the winner of “Car we’re most looking forward to driving in 2020” deserved its gong. Clue: yup
WWell, we did it so you don’t have to. The carriage of livestock is clearly not a primary role of the new Defender. Not inside at any rate, though it’d doubtless do a great job of towing an animal trailer to market, the showjumping ring or the abattoir. But, for the record, one ewe comfortably fitted behind the rear seats and even three wouldn’t have been too tight – they squash down well, on account of the wool. Afterward, the Defender’s boot floor easily removes and will take a hosing-down.
In other farming news, the Defender absolutely bursts with off-road capability. Starting this Berkshire day with muddy grass, a surface that simulates fresh snow surprisingly closely. The test car’s tyres aren’t cleated enough for the job and I got it stuck on a greasy uphill. Stopped. Engaged ‘low-friction launch’, and it alchemised traction from nowhere and proceeded to inch its way over the crest. You’ve also got superbly progressive throttle calibration. And the fab under-bumper camera system. LR does these electronics better than anyone, and backs them up with the right mechanics: diff locks and departure angles and a foot of ground clearance with the air springs. Independent suspension means they’ve no longer got low-hanging diff banjos. But OTOH you can’t just replace the springs and add even more to clearance and articulation. That last point is probably more a concern for people who buy their vehicle third-hand with a view to cruelly bashing it about.
The Defender’s design evokes its capability in ways that are in part intrinsic to its cuboid proportions. In part, too, a mining of our folk memory of the old one, but not in a cloying way. It’s so good I get even more brassed off by the inauthentic touches: too much plastic-pretending-to-be-metal around the front end, most egregiously those treadplates atop the wings. They can’t be metal because it’d contravene pedestrian impact rules. Well, if they aren’t real they shouldn’t be there at all.
It’s better again inside. You sit upright, alertly addressing the vehicle and the world beyond. The test car had washable rubber flooring under removable carpet foot-mats, a canny reversal of the norm. The interior door skins are structural, acting as an anchor for the window motors and door locks on their inner face. So it loses a trim layer, and you get extra elbow room. It’s hugely roomy in the back seats. There’s masses of storage, best of all the dash shelf below the magnesium crossbeam. It would take all the stuff my grandfather kept on the same shelf of his working Series II: claw hammer, six-inch nails, fencing staples, sheep dagging clippers, hank of baler cord, mole wrench, Murray mints.