ONE said “Land Rover ‘Offender’.” Another, “what a misguided path.” And others a lot more. The new Defender has certainly upset the Land Rover faithful and I understand their discontent.
The essential problem is this. The ‘old’ Defender, namely the one that stopped production on January 29, 2016, was a very basic and relatively simple 4x4 with a separate chassis and live axles at both ends being what it was, namely the direct descendant of the original 1948 Land Rover. That last of the old Defenders was about as low-tech as it could be, while still meeting mandatory safety and emissions regulations in play at the time.
Things would have no doubt turned out differently had Tata said to Land Rover, “design a cheap, simple and robust Defender, in both ute and wagon models, that we can build and sell in India and export to ‘developing-world’ markets in Africa, the Middle East, SE Asia, and the like”. Ironically all the places the original Land Rovers made their name and reputation. Something like that would also come far closer to keeping the Land Rover faithful here happy as well.
We called it our most DISAPPOINTING product of 2020.
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