Thread: It's official isuzu is the best

thats good to hear then yeah been doing alot of research and a handfull of people on this section know there stuff inside and out

Have beed discussing a one-off overdrive for a landy with Roverdrive's Ray Wood, his Au spec Isuzu 110 has now completed a trip around Oz, Sub Saharan Africa, UK and Europe has now just returned from a tour of Morocco (missing a bomb blast by 1 day) and is now back in the UK waiting for the Billing Show. After that it's off to Canada for a drive back to Vancouver.



It now has 300K on the clock and like most 4BD1 hasn't missed a beat.

Why can't the Rover diesels be that good?

Friggin good question: why didn't/doesn't Land Rover offer a "big engine" option for the Defender?

380N-m is quite a lot of torque, and I'm sure most small commercial truck diesels don't even come close (Nissan FD35T = 294Nm, TD42T only just gets to 350Nm, Isuzu 4BD1T is rated at 330Nm), so the R380 manual gearbox should theoretically be OK. An alternative is an auto box as an only option, to make sure the torque is properly and smoothly delivered to the drive-train and hence reduce warranty issues.

Surely this would increase the sales for a minor development outlay?

Originally Posted by jakeslouw

Friggin good question: why didn't/doesn't Land Rover offer a "big engine" option for the Defender?

380N-m is quite a lot of torque, and I'm sure most small commercial truck diesels don't even come close (Nissan FD35T = 294Nm, TD42T only just gets to 350Nm, Isuzu 4BD1T is rated at 330Nm), so the R380 manual gearbox should theoretically be OK. An alternative is an auto box as an only option, to make sure the torque is properly and smoothly delivered to the drive-train and hence reduce warranty issues.

Surely this would increase the sales for a minor development outlay?

Unfortunately Land Rover is an automotive builder within the EU so has to comply with Euro carbon emission laws across the whole range and also by UK Tax Laws. To sell a big anything will be expensive for UK Luxury tax and emit higher levels of CO2 therefore mandating smaller engines in other models or less of the L322 RR Vogue supercharged V8 models. It's the same reason that VW could build the Bugatti Beyron and Bentleys because they also build thousands of very small very efficient VW etc.

Now if they built a "rest of World model" big engined Defender in India or South Africa I don't think it would count to the EU total CO2 emissions.

Originally Posted by jakeslouw

Friggin good question: why didn't/doesn't Land Rover offer a "big engine" option for the Defender?

380N-m is quite a lot of torque, and I'm sure most small commercial truck diesels don't even come close (Nissan FD35T = 294Nm, TD42T only just gets to 350Nm, Isuzu 4BD1T is rated at 330Nm), so the R380 manual gearbox should theoretically be OK. An alternative is an auto box as an only option, to make sure the torque is properly and smoothly delivered to the drive-train and hence reduce warranty issues.

Surely this would increase the sales for a minor development outlay?

The Landrover Defender main market is the EU and specifically the UK, as a utility vehicle. Rules in some of their key markets in the EU specifically limit engine size to 2.5l (or you pay a lot more tax), which is why Landrover have kept to this or less since the mid eighties.

While a larger engine could certainly be fitted for other markets, all of these together are only a very small proportion of Defender production, which in turn is a small proportion of Landrover production. It was feasible to do when Landrovers were being assembled in Australia (or South Africa) but required the local assembler to pay for development - in Australia it was paid for by the Army sales, not sure how it was paid for in SA. And since then, costs of development of a new engine variant have gone through the roof as design rules get more and more difficult to comply with.

With a completely new design, as they plan, it is possible that the cost of a larger engine option could be a lot less, if it were designed in from the start.

John

John

While you are correct about some elements of local development, the 4BD1 in Land Rover occurred in 1981 using the Stage 1 V8 platform. This was at least 12 months before the Project Perentie tenders were called with no guarantee that Land Rover would win in a competitive selection process. So it's quite hard to justify that the 4BD1 development was paid for by the Army sales which didn't actually start until 1986. But it could be said, that litigation by Army over the Series 3 contract led to the development of the 4BD1 Stage 1.

The advent of Tata ownership opens a number of new possibilities, the Tata Motors group has part ownership of Tata-Dawoo trucks, Hispano Buses and an engine manufacturing joint venture with Fiat. So outside of the engines provided in other Land Rover products, there is the potential for use of Tata, Fiat or Dawoo truck engines.

Diana

Originally Posted by Lotz-A-Landies

John

While you are correct about some elements of local development, the 4BD1 in Land Rover occurred in 1981 using the Stage 1 V8 platform. This was at least 12 months before the Project Perentie tenders were called with no guarantee that Land Rover would win in a competitive selection process. So it's quite hard to justify that the 4BD1 development was paid for by the Army sales which didn't actually start until 1986. But it could be said, that litigation by Army over the Series 3 contract led to the development of the 4BD1 Stage 1.

I agree the Stage 1 Isuzu was not paid for by army sales - but in my view it was prompted the prospects of army sales, but also by what was still quite a substantial local assembly business, that was decreasing partly because of lack of a powerful diesel.

The advent of Tata ownership opens a number of new possibilities, the Tata Motors group has part ownership of Tata-Dawoo trucks, Hispano Buses and an engine manufacturing joint venture with Fiat. So outside of the engines provided in other Land Rover products, there is the potential for use of Tata, Fiat or Dawoo truck engines.

Diana

Yes, if the current Defender was not slated for imminent replacement, we could well see a replacement or alternative engine from one of those associated engine manufacturers. With a replacement platform in the works, it will be interesting to see what comes out, although I would not hold my breath - Landrover Australia still seems to find the Defender a bit of an embarrassment for a luxury car importer, so it seems unlikely they will want to push even a new Defender as a working vehicle. And in that case the market will remain very small, hardly sufficient to justify an engien to satisfy Australian requirements. Of course, Tata may decide to try and reconquer the working vehicle market, regardless of what the locals think!

John

Absolutely John

If Tata want to expand their commercial sales around the World and especially in markets where Land Rover "Defender" style vehicles previously held a significant market presence, it would seem wise for them to use a Defender or Defender successor Land Rover to do that penetration.

More than that I am not convinced, however excellent the D4/RRS platform is, that a high-end micro-processor controlled model is the right "commercial" vehicle to compete with Land-Cruiser troop carriers and Hi-Lux utes across places like Australia, Africa, the Middle East and other developing countries.

So in the short term - the Isuzu Landy wins!

Diana