Thread: Defender Dilemma

Originally Posted by camel_landy

Building the Defender is very labour intensive as it's pretty much hand built and as such Land Rover don't actually make much money out of it...

M

But just think - they can sell you spare parts for the next 40 years and make their money that way

Guaranteed income stream!

Originally Posted by JDNSW

Making the Defender is labour intensive, yes. But against this has to be weighed the fact that it uses relatively little tooling, and that much of the tooling used has been in use for fifty years, meaning its cost has long since been written off. However, if you look at the structure of the Defender and its predecessors, you will note a gradual reduction in the amount of labour to build them - for example, the change from chassis rails made of flat profile cut plate with four welds to pressed sections with two weld (Series 3 for lwb, 90 for swb) or the change from fabricated door frames to pressed door frames (1987) or the change to steel door skins (2007), gradually changing traditional construction methods. The same happened to the RR classic in the late seventies - eighties as production volumes increased.

No...

I wasn't posting a discussion point, I was making a factual statement.

M