Thread: Whats Missing from the Home page of Land Rovers wonderful Website

Originally Posted by debruiser

They can't change the defender styling. It's an icon. I am sad just thinking about it.... Maybe I should buy a newish one now and keep it for later on.

The only thing that is certain is the old styling will be gone. Every press appearance by LR Execs is saying the same thing over and over and over. The latest outings are even raising the prospect that the Defender will be killed off not just in styling but in name also. Given the seeming impossibility of producing a vehicle that meets expectations of a wider market whilst satisfying the demands of the fans to "change nothing, but make it better", perhaps the only thing LR can realistically do is kill off the Defender completely and leave the heritage rest in peace?

The new Land Rover Defender has the potential to continue the company’s considerable recent growth and once again become a core model in its product line up, admits LR Global Brand Director Jonathan Edwards.

“The global market for SUVs is predicted to be 20 million units by 2020,” he told MSN Cars on the launch of the 2013 Freelander 2 in Canada. “The Defender ‘utility’ sector is expected to take around 6 million of those sales.

“We sold 16,000 units of the current Defender last year, which simply isn’t good enough. The size of the market shows the potential we have for gains.”

Replacing it, he said, is similar to the task faced by the team that replaced the original Mini. “There’s huge debate in every area on what it should be and how it should do it.

“Managing those ideas and making decisions is one of the major tasks faced by the project development team at the moment.

“Despite its complexity, designing a new Range Rover is a relatively linear challenge. With the Defender, everyone has a point of view and overall management needs to make the right judgments based on the business goals of the company.”

These include, he said, growth in emerging markets and reducing Land Rover’s overall CO2 emissions.

Edwards also revealed he hopes the car will retain the ‘Defender’ name but even this is up for debate within the firm.

We shouldn’t necessarily expect the new Defender to look like the DC100 concept when it goes on sale in 2015 though, said Edwards. “That was very much an ideas-generator, a public demonstration of one way the Defender project could go.

“It is not a design concept that necessarily is being honed into the final product.” Already, it seems, the project has moved on considerably from the car MSN Cars drove at the New York Auto Show back in April 2012.

“There’s no short-termism any more at Land Rover. We can finally plan for the longer term, look five and 10 years ahead.” The Defender project is, it seems, to form a key part of this strategy…