Motoring

IN DEFENCE OF THE DEFENDER

I care – therefore I worry. About Land Rover, that is. Are they getting the new Defender right?

I’ve owned ten series of Defender Land Rovers (the square basic sort that are universally recognised). It is 70 years this year since the launch of the Series One, intended as a stop-gap while Rover developed its post-war saloons. It proved an instant hit and, for the next two decades, Rover couldn’t or wouldn’t make enough of them. Simple, rugged and classless, favoured by royalty, adopted by armies and beloved by farmers, they became ubiquitous in the British Empire and beyond.

But by the 1970s, with Rover absorbed into the doomed behemoth that became British Leyland, the Toyota Land Cruiser and Hilux were making inroads into Land Rover’s traditional markets. Land Rover was used as a cash cow to support BL’S dying, mass-market products. Toyota and Nissan – more modern, more reliable, cheaper and with prompt spares back-up – rapidly conquered the market. They’re there still – look at all those ad hoc gun platforms in TV coverage of Iraq and Syria.

By the time the last Defender rolled off the line in January 2016, they were selling a dwindling 22,000 a year. Of course, much else happened to the company meanwhile. With the Range Rover, Discovery and Freelander, it successfully diversified into – arguably created – the luxury off-roader/softroader market.

Now, under the benign ownership of Tata, Jaguar Land Rover has a production strategy which includes a new Range Rover Coupé for the luxury market, a new Defender for the utility market and a compact SUV (sports utility vehicle, a sector growing at 28 per cent per year). With the market location and role of the new SUV still under discussion, JLR has announced that it will definitely launch a back-to-basics Defender pick-up truck by 2020. It’s this that worries me.

Pick-up trucks, single cab or double, are everywhere. Look around and you’ll see Toyotas, Nissans, Mitsubishis, Fords, VWS. Even Mercedes is in the market now with its X-class. Any new entrant has to at least match the existing players on price, reliability, ruggedness, economy, cab comforts and capacity; it must fit a pallet in the back between the wheel arches.

But, to steal sales, it has to offer something extra as well. Land Rover may sell a few through sentimental attachment to past glories or through novelty, but those categories aren’t sustainable. If it’s to bite a chunk out of that market, it has not only to more than match what the others do, but to offer something they don’t. And for that, it must return to one of its original virtues.

One reason an estimated 70 per cent of all Defenders made are still driven is their outdated, expensive and simple, Meccano-like construction: they are easily dismantled and every bit is replaceable, almost in your garden shed. In fact, early Series Ones were designed to be serviced in the field.

This matters, not only in remote parts of the world, but in any market where durability and resale value count. Granted, modern emissions legislation decrees computers in all modern cars, but even they can be made more rugged, secure, diagnosable and replaceable than they are now.

If the new Defender has ease of maintenance as a selling point, it could be a big success. If it’s just a clone of all the others, neither worse nor better, it will remain a minority sport.