Re: Long live the Defender
Quote:
Originally posted by Larns
This will cause some contreversy
A good friend of mine is the head of sales for Landrover in Bathurst. Whilst chewing the fat over a couple of beers at christmas, he broke the news to me that Land Rover Aust have withdrawn his dealership from him affective as of Oct this year. Apparently they are only going to keep two or three open in N.S.W, Ford are planning to turn the Discovery into a prestige car with ALL the options, aiming for the kind of market that Rangerovers sold to five to ten years ago, they will be directly compeating with the like's of BMW and Merc's. With the price tag to suite.
Ford are also going to stop sales (I don't think production, I may be wrong though) of the Defender in Aust very soon. Apparently because they don't have air bags and side intrusion in the doors (and they are still the only 4WD hand assembled, which makes them extreamly expensive to make) Ford want nothing to do with them.
He said as far as the 90 is conserned, hes still able to get them in an has heard nothing about LR not importing it any more. But with the demise of the defender I suppose it's irrelevent anyhow.
Scary stuff for defender followers.
Larns
Yeah the dealerships are going as all ready has been said, they are going for less is more angle
As for Ford, well A yank is in charge of your Land Rover Australia dealerships, so what do you expect.
Ford used to have a moto of Race it Sunday and sell it Monday, but they are pulling out of motor sport (well in Uk anyway)
The Defender is up for a change soon.
But the defender at the moment is working on 50 year old safty test.
Main due to the fact , if you don't change the bulk Head as we call it (you call it fire wall) then you don't have to get the truck to have a new safty test. Hence why the wheel spats , as a S1 and S2 have the same bulkhead size as a new Defender.
This why it is no longer sold in America. Also it was sold with the "nice cage", not for looks but so it would pass the safty test. But made it look cool.
A company down the road from me Here in the Uk was give a defender steering wheel and told to put an airbag in it. They laughed and handed it back.
But due to new radical testing the new defender will be totally differant to what we are used to .