LAND ROVER DEFENDER REINVENTED FOR 2018
The All-new icon will be the most high-tech Land Rover yet, have exceptional off-road ability and be sold as a premium 4x4
Land Rover will use its 70th anniversary celebrations in 2018 to finally reveal its plans for a reborn Defender, which will go on sale in 2019.
It is now almost two years since the Defender went out of production — 67 years after the original Land Rover Series I it’s derived from entered it — and there has been a wall of silence around the company’s plans to launch a replacement.
However, Autocar can now reveal that the new Defender, code-named L663, will finally be shown in final production car, not a concept.
The company did start to show the family of DC100 concepts in 2011, which at the time were said to preview a more low-cost new Defender then coming in 2015. But such was the reaction against the DC100 becoming the new Defender that the firm returned to the drawing board.
Initial launch plans for the reborn Defender centre on two different wheelbases and two distinct bodystyles. The famous 90in and 110in wheelbase that gave the old Defender 90 and Defender 110 their names will also inspire the naming strategy of the new model, which will be built on a version of one of Jaguar Land Rover’s aluminium architectures.
Those wheelbases will house both hardtop and soft-top bodystyle options for the new car.
An eventual series of Defender models will potentially include a pickup and a lineup of different versions and trims ranging from the more civilised everyday use to the most hard-core, as well as more premium and performance varieties, with one eye on the continued success of the Mercedes-Benz G-Wagen.
The new Defender will have a full and updated suite of off-road technology based on the Terrain Response II system that surpasses the tech offered on the new Discovery model introduced this year.
Land Rover is aiming for the new Defender to be designed and engineered to have the kind of ground clearance and approach, departure and break-over angles that will give it class-leading off-road performance and agility.