Thread: Video reviews

The all drove the same route in Namibia (except for a couple in the UK) so reviews were bound to be similar.

What I’m taking away from these reviews:

Sounds like LR has delivered a vehicle that - at least while it’s new and fully functional - will take you through some pretty challenging environments in a pretty relaxed manner. If your work required you to drive through out of the way places, you’d be wanting your vehicle to give you an experience of comfort and capability and practicality similar to what these journos have described. Some recreational off-road masochists would have a different set of priorities, but there are many people who would like to do outback touring in a 4WD that lives up to the claims that LR makes about this new vehicle.

The #1 question that these reviews can’t possibly answer is how reliable this Defender will be over time, especially in these sorts of conditions. And the #2 that follows immediately after that is how difficult and costly it is to make things right when something goes wrong unexpectedly.

I liked one of the comments in one video that apparently the limp modes are designed to retain much more of your capability envelope for exactly this reason – to increase your ability to recover from a tricky situation. And another which was that the plastic trim on doors, sills and bumpers is designed to break cleanly and be (relatively?) cheaply replaced. You could see a missing chunk on one of the UK test vehicles right behind the front left wheel in one review.

Very much looking forward to test driving a D240.

While it is easy to be impressed, it seems that all the journos on the Namibia trip were car journos. There didn't seem to be any specialist 4WD writers along. The tracks were of course chosen knowing the car could cope.

I like it, on first impression, but I'd wait for maybe a year. Let it bed in, see what the real world says. But I'd hazard the guess that LR will sell them by the shirtload. And I still believe it will become the logical successor to the D4. Minus the split tailgate, sadly.

Every video is another motoring journalist that has never driven off road in their lives. But they have no problem stating how good is is off road... Insane.

Orchestrated by Land Rover (as every launch is orchestrated by the manufacturer).
Journalists have been flown out at LR's expense so duty bound to reel off all the LR stats they've been given.

Looks like it meets the needs of a modern 'driver'....comfortable, entertainment system, tells you the water depth without you checking first etc. etc.
Problem is that the modern driver wants to change the vehicle as often as they change their smart phone, it'll be interesting to see how the resale value holds up.

Intrigued by the comment that the external plastic trim 'breaks cleanly' and is cheap to replace !? I wonder what they mean by cheap ?

I look forward to some real World test drives when the public can actually buy them.


Colin

Looking at what has been done on the trips in the reviews it does not look like they have tackled anything that i would not do in a Discovery whether that be 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5.

Originally Posted by chuck

Looking at what has been done on the trips in the reviews it does not look like they have tackled anything that i would not do in a Discovery whether that be 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5.

My view also. I would not hesitate to tackle that stuff in my LRs, although I confess some of the downhill rock stuff might put me off in my SIII 109. And maybe the water crossings.... and.... The Discos though? No worries.

JT

Last time i drove a series III 109 I was a soldier which was a long time ago.

Driving LR's back then was work not pleasure lol

Used to have a well sorted D2 which at time ran 34" Simex JT2's - could not keep up with double locked Defenders but it used to do ok.