More from McGovern--

Exactly, which is why Defender is so important and even more remarkable given that without Defender (without a workhorse vehicle), Land Rover is generic.

The work ute market is booming and its remarkable that Land Rover have missed this opportunity. Why not develop a mid-sized work ute in the past 10 years (instead of the Velar perhaps?), alongside the full-sized HD new Defender?

I guess now all we can hope is that the next Defender will be more heavy duty than the current crop of light duty dual cabs. If not, the brand will take a big credibility hit. Because it's the image of the workhorse and of serious adventure capability that all the SUV's in the Land Rover line up rely on. The green oval is only desirable because it sells the image of real adventure and heavy duty capability. Without the real thing, all the current Land Rover SUV babushka dolls don't look so cool. They just look like generic luxury cars.

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Originally Posted by 3toes

Land-Rover has been moving away from the work horse vehicle since the seventies. You only need to look at where they have invested their research funds and the vehicles this has produced. There has been no/minimal investment in the work horse type vehicle they built their name on. They have gone where the volume market is and that is city drivers who want to think they are driving the halo Defender just more comfortable/practical. If they had not done this they would have died a long time ago.

In Australia you see so many Toyota 4x4 you think the world outside is the same. Reality is even Toyota sells so few ‘proper’ 4x4 they have stopped investing some years ago and the product is going to be cut. They too do not sell that many. Holden Commodore outsold the Landcruiser in the USA by a margin.

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Dunno where that comment comes from.Sure Toyota total % of sales,'proper' 4x4,i presume you are talking 70 series and LC200,is low compared with total world sales of all their vehicles..

Looking at last years Aus only sales of these two models,they increased from year before and were more than Defender total world sales in 2016.Then add the high Prado sales here as well.

In fact talking to the commercial fleet sales guy at the local Toyota dealer(who we deal with a lot at work),they can't keep up with the 70 series sales.
Nissan and LR have virtually handed this market to Toyota.

Toyota have also recently upgraded the 70 series range,so i doubt it gets cut anytime soon.

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Originally Posted by scarry

Nissan and LR have virtually handed this market to Toyota.
Toyota have also recently upgraded the 70 series range,so i doubt it gets cut anytime soon.

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Agreed. LR dropped the ball.

While perhaps not as big as the luxury car market, the market for real 4x4 work vehicles is huge.

Globally Landcruiser sales have been in decline for many years. They do not break out LC wagon and 70 figures which are reported together. Sales peaked in 2008 at 404k units and have seen a constant decline since then. For the 2017 year there were 166k vehicles sold globally (source Toyota Japan).

Toyota Australia quotes a global sales figure for the 70 series of 75k vehicles in 2015. You will notice that Toyota Australia marketing only talks about the total number of vehicles sold since the model was introduced not the number being sold now.

With these low production numbers you can see why the project to design a replacement for the 70 series was cancelled by Toyota in 2013 and the updates that were recently made were only just enough to meet mining companies requirements and then only to the models that the mines used. Perhaps why Nissan and Land-Rover have both moved away from the segment as well.

It is interesting to note the sales figures achieved by Ford, GM and Dodge in the USA for light trucks. These vehicles are though very USA market centric and have not seen significant export success.

Globally the volume is in the Hilux market segment which is massive and growing

double post[bigsad]

Land Cruiser(200,76,78,79)sales figures in Aus are separated,wagons being separated from the utes.

All models of the 70 series were upgraded,a good few months ago.

The single cab Ute had more substantial upgrades to satisfy the 5 star rating.

A lot of this info including the sales stats is in the E mag in a recent thread on this site.

So the large HD 4x4 wagon is dead? Is there really no longer a market?

...unless next Defender is the real deal.

...there still don't appear to be any G Professional wagons in the country either.

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Originally Posted by Zeros

So the large HD 4x4 wagon is dead? Is there really no longer a market?

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big custom build market in Europe and about 3 big players over there with offerings, so the market cant be totally dead

one came up in a banner advert here for me the other week but i cannot recall their name...

i do remember they werent cheap, thats for sure.