Thread: The New Defender

Originally Posted by DiscoDB

The Australia market is irrelevant to JLR. The New Defender is all about cracking the US Market where SUV’s sell by the millions.

Jeep have 3 SUV’s in the top 10 in 2018.

Will they crack it?

Some of the biggest sellers over there are 4x4 'tough trucks' like the Ram, Chevy, Toyota, and Ford F series pickups - aka utes. If the US was the be all and end all, LR would have made the defender a tough truck Ute. At least in one of its variants!

And if not a tough truck, look at the SUV competition. The Toyota RAV 4 is the best selling SUV followed by the Jeep Cherokee, Toyota Highlander and Jeep wrangler. All of which are a lot cheaper than the new defender!

For comparison The 2019*Jeep Cherokee*has a starting*price*of $25,490 USD , making it one of the more expensive vehicles in the class. You can add four-wheel drive to the base trim for $1,500. A fully loaded*Cherokee*Trailhawk Elite*costs*about $42,000 USD.

The Pretender will start at 50k USD! And heads well north of 80k for all the bells and whistles

So clearly they are not going for a US best seller! Lower volume at premium prices is their choice.


The Jeep wrangler has Defender like heritage. The 2020 model still looks like a wrangler and serves like a wrangler. It has short, long wheelbase variants AND a UTE variant. A new Defender could have been competing with the wrangler in the US - The pretender will not. The Wrangler family all come in under 50k USD!

Land rover already have many expensive SUV models that sell well worldwide. They have a new factory in Slovakia to turn out higher volumes at less cost. So you would think they could afford to build a cheaper range of Defenders, keeping its utilitarian variants in tact, and be brave enough to target higher volume sales.

Originally Posted by blackrangie

Here we go "bare bones" defender price on the road.

Bare Bones in Australia is certainly not Bare Bones with things like keyless entry, air suspension, offriad tyres, tpms,semi powered front sests, cruise, 360 degree cameras etc.

Mores the pity they can't make a 'bare bones' unit without all that guff and bring the price down $20K. Think they'd sell a shed load more if they did, but it sort of proves what others have said - LR isn't interested in that market, but pushes all the luxo BS onto only those that can afford the very top end - which is not what made LR great in the first place.

True - but even if they only get into the top 30 SUV’s they would be making record sales for any LR.

Editing my post - even if they crack the Top 50 SUVs sold in the US they would have record sales - this is how big the US market is. Plenty of expensive SUVs out sell LR products.

Originally Posted by scarry

Not really,extra fuel will be handy no matter what engine is in the vehicle.

Sure petrol will use more,that’s a given.How much more,who knows.

Looking at actual fuel usage for the diesel,that is going on D5 owners reports,that run the same engines,it’s not that frugal,actually similar to D3/4 TDV6.

And the new Defender is heavier and more likely to have accessories hanging off it.

Oh,and by the way,my first house cost $39 000.Maybe I am older than some of you guys.

The home I grew up in cost $8,500 on a 1/4acre that cost $250

My first car cost twice that!

This is the real competition....



The Ford Expedition starts at US$53K for RWD only and outsells anything from LR by a factor of 3-4.

And when it is released, the 130 will be competing with the Chevrolet Surburban which costs even more and is even less capable off road. Also outsells everything from LR.

Large SUVs

On-road the New Defender will match all of these for comfort and features, and off-road it will leave them all behind - and if comparing base spec to base spec - then the new Defender out specs them all. To take any of these large SUV’s off road you have to option them up.

Originally Posted by Homestar

Mores the pity they can't make a 'bare bones' unit without all that guff and bring the price down $20K. Think they'd sell a shed load more if they did, but it sort of proves what others have said - LR isn't interested in that market, but pushes all the luxo BS onto only those that can afford the very top end - which is not what made LR great in the first place.

That's the commercial defender.

Originally Posted by 101RRS

Well you are the one who brought the issue of pricing into this thread.

You cannot pick and choose what you want discussed.

Now there is a specific thread on pricing in Australia it's best moved there based on the way this forum has historically operated would you not agree?

Originally Posted by DiscoDB

The Australia market is irrelevant to JLR. The New Defender is all about cracking the US Market where SUV’s sell by the millions.

Jeep have 3 SUV’s in the top 10 in 2018. LR’s best selling SUV was the RR Sport and it did not even get into the top 50 selling less in a year than any of the top Jeep SUV’s sell per month.

JLR are using the Defender legend to re-brand the Discovery to compete with Jeep. The new Discovery made no dent in US sales - but no doubt will get market share in Europe.

In Australia - the New Defender is really only competing with the New Discovery.

The new defender doesn't really have any direct competition as it's in its own category(thats why its so hard to think of competitors), I would say based on what I've seen they will sell a ton more of these defenders in Australia than they ever did before, they will also win discerning buyers from other manufacturers. If AU was irrelevent, the new defender would not be here, maybe less critical would be more factual. D5, is a very different animal, both externally and internally, with a different target buyer.

Im loving how tough the interior is!