![]() The BMW X5 M and Porsche Cayenne have been doing it for years. Modern unibody SUVs like the Defender have become scary good-not so much at hiding their considerable mass-but at corralling it in a way that still encourages you to drive the thing in anger. As a bonus, it’s genuinely fun to drive, too. Still, this is the tightrope a new Defender must walk: broadcast and reaffirm the Defender owner’s expectations of rugged capability, while offering enough luxury and performance to justify the generous $111,300 MSRP of our test car.įortunately, Land Rover nailed the rugged/luxury quotient with its fully redesigned Defender line, which bowed in 2019, is built in Slovakia, then shipped to every corner of the globe. Plus, the Defenders that finally made it stateside never lodged in the public consciousness, so few were they in numbers. It's a tall task, especially in America, where we saw few Defenders over the years our expectations of the rig coalesced from some hazy Anglophilia. To meet the expectations placed on any vehicle with a Defender badge, they’d have to rework their rugged, durable, capable icon with enough off-road talent to maintain credibility, but with the comfort and luxury modern shoppers would expect from a Land Rover badge. The real money exists in the top-shelf luxury SUV market, which handed Land Rover a tall task. In 2023, the economics of selling bare-bones SUVs don’t shake out frumpy farm trucks don’t turn a buck anymore (only the Mahindra Roxor offers truly no-frills motoring to the agricultural set). ![]() What then do we make of this leather-bound entry in the Defender story? The question isn’t a condemnation, but rather a curiosity. Save a few exterior styling elements like the rounded DRLs, tail light stacks, and the general toaster-oven shape of the thing, this new Defender looks nothing like the old one, that frumpy English farmer with wheels. This modern Defender would look unrecognizable to Land Rover oldheads. My mind reeled when a Santorini black Land Rover Defender 110 V8 rumbled into my driveway.
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