It's water under the bridge now, as they must be close to finished the New Defender, but I would have liked Tata to have taken over the Defender project from JLR.
Tata are better placed to make a vehicle more in line with the original Series/Defender heritage - a world people's utility vehicle. When you think of Landrover, you think of Africa, dust, people and animals piled into them and on their roof racks on some God-forsaken third-world road, up to their axles in bulldust. Can JLR still do that?
Tata could have used any Rover technology that they wanted, but cranked out a simple, strong all-road people's car at the right price from their Indian factories. It could have been an explosive success, greater than the unexpected success of the original in the 1950's.
There seems to me a huge gap in the 4WD market at present. Landcruiser has gone big, expensive and fuel-thirsty, more than what a 4wd ute really needs. Hilux has gone a bit dainty and flash, at least in perception. All the Japanese ones are creeping up in price, and, lets face it, they all look the same and offer much the same thing to the same market. None tap into the new environmental ethos.
Tata could have reinvented Defender as a modern fuel efficient, environmentally friendly, simple-to-work-on, off-highway utility vehicle at a price ripe for the picking in the huge growth market of the developing world, and leave the cashed-up wannabe-macho first world market to British billionaires. If not, that huge world market will be left to the Chinese - good for them.
I'm sure New Defender will be a fine vehicle, but, like everyone else here it seems, I expect it to be just another boring, swishy-looking, expensive JLR clone. Hope we're wrong.
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