I’m going to be a little controversial here.
The original Defender, in whatever guise, had character. Now by character we usually mean all the little imperfections that go toward making each truck unique. For Land Rovers in particular, that came from poor build quality. We all joke about it, accept it, love it and sometimes hate it. The second part of it is that is that in order to be commercially successful Land Rover need to build cars in markets where people with money will buy them. The governments in those markets insist on things like passenger and pedestrian safety and envirocrap.
So what is Land Rover to do? In this case, not having seen the truck in person, I’d suggest they’ve done the only thing the could do- build a crashworthy, pedestrian-friendly, emissions compliant truck with excellent off-road ability and durability (the test regime was impressive) where as much of the gadgetry are optional extras. You can even mop out the floor! I suspect you will be able to tinker with the base model as much as any Land Cruiser or Pajero. No, it’s not a 79, but it also won’t be an underpowered rattletrap, vacuuming in dust like Hoover and requiring daily first aid to stay on the road, the market for which is shrinking by the day. By this time next year we’ll know if they’ve hit the mark.
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