Thread: The Defender Name

This is one of the things that comes up from time to time, so I thought I would write a little about it.

Firstly, despite its name, the Landrover Defender is not and never was a military design! Certainly, it is, and has been, used by quite a few military forces, but the name is just that - a name. And what is more, a name dreamed up by the marketing people.

Let's look at where the Defender came from. Until 1989 they were simply Landrovers. But then Landrover, about to release the newly designed Discovery (itself simply a rebodied Rangerover), were intent on distancing the Discovery from the very similar Rangerover, so decided to change the tack taken when the Rangerover was introduced, when the Range Rover was another model from the Rover car company, alongside the Land Rover and other models. They decided that instead of being a Rover Discovery, it would be a Landrover Discovery. This presented a bit of a problem for the vehicles simply named Landrover 110, 90, 127. So to group them as a separate family, they were provided with a new name, Defender.

At this time (1989) the vehicles that were to become Defenders were simply the evolved versions of the original Landrover introduced in 1948. That was effectively a civilian version of the wartime Willys and Ford Jeep, modified to suit Rover's production capability and existing designs.

It was specifically not designed as a military vehicle, but as a civilian vehicle for mainly rural use. But it was soon bought, eventually in large numbers, by various armed forces, because it was far cheaper, nearly as good, if not in some aspects better, and far more flexible than the specifically designed military vehicles (Austin Champ). But until the rise of competing Japanese designs in the mid seventies, it remained primarily a civilian vehicle, although after that, as sales declined, a larger proportion were military, as the military wanted to keep the same vehicles as they had.

The original design evolved progressively to the early eighties, when it was replaced by the coil spring models that became known as Defenders. These retained the design philosophy, structural design and styling of the last of the leaf spring Landrovers (Series 3), with the styling being almost unchanged from that introduced in 1958 with the Series 2. This existing body was mounted on a slightly modified Rangerover chassis - clearly a purely civilian design - and the process of evolution continued.

This evolution moved the design (at least of most sold) further into the urban area and even further from the military versions, with innovations such as power steering, wind up windows, airconditioning etc. At first, when the coil spring versions were introduced, most military forces were dubious to say the least, and some military customers continued to insist on leaf spring versions well into coil spring production.

So to conclude, it is clear that the name "Defender" is purely a marketing name. it incorrectly implies that they are a military vehicle, where nothing could be further from the truth. Certainly some Defenders are used by the military, but not because they were designed as a military vehicle, but because they are a cost effective and useful vehicle. As an example, the "Acco" Internationals could be called military designs with far more justification, since the original design was for the Army, and the civilian designs were derived from these.

John

Originally Posted by Reads90

It was thought up by them in a pub in New York hours before they showed the pre visions of the disco . They suddenly thought they better have a name for the car that was always just called Land Rover .
Defender was, i was told was called because it defender the land rover name and all that land rover stod for . Nothing to do with the army . I was told this when i was talking to Charles Spence King . That was in 1991 . So still only just been done . as it was done at the end of the 80's

Now that's what I call getting it from the horse's mouth!!!

What a great story.

Cheers, Iain