Thread: Now it's BABY ROVER!!!!

Originally Posted by scrambler

LR want to get into the US of A - and the Baby LR will sell up a storm there. Every teen wannabe will get daddy to buy one for them.

You're probably right!

As you know I'm the Administrator on the RangeRoves.net forum. You'd be surprised (maybe you wouldn't) at how many registrations I get from US 15-17 year olds with DII, P38A, or Range Rover Sports! (Although most of the Sport owners are in their Twenties.)

Originally Posted by scrambler

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But it will never make it to Australia. Our crash legislation will take care of THAT.

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It is impossible to market a car similar to the 80" today except in very restricted markets like India and China - and even there you can expect them to follow design restrictions similar to those elsewhere.

The combination of crash legislation and emissions legislation mean that even if you designed a vehicle to fill the same niche as the 80", it would be very expensive for what you get, and would lack the simplicity, owner maintainability and versatility. The design restrictions on road going cars today make development and tooling so expensive that the only way to make a reasonably cheap car is to make lots of them - and the workhorse vehicle has never sold in that large a numbers, especially in Australia. Today in Australia the role of the 80" is filled in most cases by four wheel motorbikes or more roadable four wheel drives. The first is a lot cheaper than any "new 80" could be made but is not useable on the road, the second (mostly Hiluxes, Landcruisers and Patrols, but a lot of four wheel drive versions of conventional utes plus a very few Defenders) are a lot better on the road and for load carrying than a "new 80" would be. The Suzuki Stockman filled the role fairly well for a few years, but it would be no more possible to make one of them than an 80" today.

John