Where are the early '90s Defenders?!

[USDefender]

I've been searching for a 110 in the '90-'93 range and can't seem to find anything other than '94s. Anyone know why?

[manic]

Americans nabbed them all? 90 - 91 they were known in Auz as '110 County'.

[JDNSW]

The name was changed to Defender when the Discovery (and 200Tdi) were introduced in 1989. And in Australia, after local assembly of 110s ("Landrover 110", mostly County trim wagons, not "Defender") was completed about the beginning of 1990, no Defenders were sold until about 1993-4. The only ones from this period that will exist in Australia will be personal imports, and there will not be many of these.

[USDefender]

Does the same hold true for the '90s? Or do they have a different story?

[LRT]

So did we get the 200Tdi Defenders?

There is a 200Tdi Defender near here with over a million miles on the clock but it was imported from the UK by the original owner. There is also a green Defender wagon with the Defender stripes on the sides that I'm pretty sure is a 200Tdi when I asked the owner about it.

Our 1995 Defender 130 is a 300Tdi. When was the 300tdi released in Aus?

[JDNSW]

Does the same hold true for the '90s? Or do they have a different story?

The 90 was not sold in Australia at all until, from memory, for a short period in the very late nineties, when only a few were sold. They were reintroduced in the early 2000s, but very few were sold until the last three or four years of Defender production. They may not have been available continuously even in the 2000s(No pre-Defender 90s were ever sold in Australia) They remain quite rare compared to 110s and 130s.

Not just Defenders - go back to when four wheel drives started being used as private vehicles in the 1960s, and the preference was very much for swb models. From about the end of the seventies the preference changed to lwb four wheel drives, possibly because we started to carry a lot more junk when going bush.

[USDefender]

Any idea when the first 130s arrived down under?? Would love to get one, but need one older than around June '94.

[JDNSW]

The predecessor of the 130, the so-called "120", was sold in Australia from the mid to late 80s. Badged a 110, they were, as far as I know, sold only as cab/chassis, and were quite common.

The 130 was a follow on from these, but I don't remember seeing any 130s until well into the 1990s.

Just for completeness, the first factory dual cab Landrovers were a small number of 110s made for the Australian Bi-centennary Commission in about 1986-7. They were all V8s. A few probably still exist, but I haven't seen one for years.

John

[spudfan]

The Defender name entered the Land Rover world with the launch of the 200tdi engine 90/110 range.

[rick130]

The predecessor of the 130, the so-called "120", was sold in Australia from the mid to late 80s. Badged a 110, they were, as far as I know, sold only as cab/chassis, and were quite common.

The 130 was a follow on from these, but I don't remember seeing any 130s until well into the 1990s.

Just for completeness, the first factory dual cab Landrovers were a small number of 110s made for the Australian Bi-centennary Commission in about 1986-7. They were all V8s. A few probably still exist, but I haven't seen one for years.

John

Further to Johns info, the 120 was an Australian only model made here by JRA. It had a 120" wheelbase.

In the eighties the UK predecessor of the 130 was the 127 and was a special order model (the 130 shares the 127's 127" wheelbase) It soon became a production model and was renamed the 130.

I honestly can't recall seeing a 200Tdi 130 here in Oz? The earliest ones I've seen were '94 300Tdi's ?

[JDNSW]

Yes, the 120 was an Australian innovation, perhaps copied from the Landcruisers which introduced an extended chassis in the mid 1960s in Australia, as their lwb was only 104", which they extended to 121". The English 127 was inspired by the Australian 120.

[87County]

We have a 4BD1 120 - great ute :)

So were the 200tdi Defenders only available in 110" wheelbase, in Cab/Chassis, Hardtop and Station Wagon?

Interested to hear if anyone is aware of any variations to this, e.g.. Telstra, Agquip Extracabs? Or were these only 300tdi and Td5 130 models ?

[JDNSW]

I'm pretty sure that is correct - Landrover lost most of what market they had by simply not selling any for several years, and the change from local assembly to fully imported made any variants much more difficult to manage, so they did not bother until the market had been re-established to some extent.