All rise please
DESPITE the fact that we are living in a world with lots of depressing news there is one positive certainty: old Defender prices are not only holding their own, they are slowly but surely creeping up. Old Defenders are in demand like never before. When you chat to people who are in the business of buying and selling them, they concur. Is there any other mass-produced mainstream vehicle (with a starting price of around £25,000 when they were still selling them) that holds its value so well? I don’t think so. If there is, please do let me know.
Some doomsayers predicted the old Defender bubble would burst when the new one came out; that was over a year ago now and the opposite has happened. I’ve had my rare 1998 Defender for three years now. I paid less than £5000 for it, I’ve insured it for £16,000 and today you won’t get a similar vehicle for less than £7500 if purchased in South Africa, the only place they were originally sold. If purchased in the UK expect to pay a minimum of around £14,000 for one. That is what one sold for over a year ago at an auction. I put a 2000 Defender 90 2.8i like mine in an auction about 14 months ago. It was in much better condition than mine and had also done less miles and it went for £19,000.
During the recent half term I went off to Scotland and stayed on the shores of Loch Ness. During a previous visit up there my friends at Wildtrax only had two Land Rovers in their fleet. Today they have ten Defenders and are currently looking at buying more. “We can’t believe the prices people are asking for low-mileage, late, old-style Defenders. It’s incredible really,” revealed James Munday, the founder of Wildtrax. I advised him to cast his net wider to Australia or South Africa and look for good Td5s. Vehicles will be much cheaper than buying a Puma-engined Defender that has been on salted roads its whole life.
I have promised my Defender 110 to my seven-year-old son Isaac, so it isn’t going anywhere for any price. All the money in the world can’t replace the magic moments and memories we have created in the Green Mamba. It is my Defender for life or, as Isaac would say, until he is old enough to legally drive. By then he should understand the economic implications of 20 miles per gallon. What shall it be, Isaac? Edinburgh University or Leicester University?