Petrol Heads’ Corner – Land Rover Defender 110

David O’Neill*

The first Land Rover was made in 1948 by the Rover Company based in Coventry UK. Land Rovers were famous for their ability to go anywhere, do anything and being virtually indestructible.

Early Land Rovers had nonrusting aluminium alloy bodies because of a post-war shortage of steel. In 1992, Land Rover claimed that 70% of all the vehicles they had built were still in use.

The old Land Rover Series I and II had skinny tyres, flat windscreen, sliding windows and pop riveted panels. Steering was not power assisted. The amount of play in the steering wheel and the gearstick was phenomenal. They were beasts to drive but hardly ever broke down and could go anywhere. They are now worth a small fortune and their prices eclipse the prices of the modern day Land Rover Defender.

I have been intrigued by the new Land Rover Defender for some time now and was able to lay my hands on one recently, courtesy of the local Land Rover dealer, Duncan & Ebbett. It was the Defender 110 SE.

The price of this car was $140,055 as optioned. It had a variety of extras which bumped the price up from the original retail price of $123,900.

Features

My car had an 8 speed automatic transmission with all-wheel drive and loads of fairly standard bits and pieces including a heated steering wheel, heated windscreen, electric this and electric that, off-road tyres and touchscreen for everything else. It came with air suspension and adaptive dynamics (whatever that is). The spare wheel is bolted on the outside of the rear door which probably adds about 30 cms to the length.

Because of this spare wheel filling a large portion of the rear window, it has a very cool feature. (I don’t know whether it’s an option or not. If it is, get it). You flick a lever on the rear view mirror and the mirror is converted into a screen for a rear facing camera – very clever and useful.

Motor

Most surprisingly it had a 2-litre, 4-cylinder, twin turbo diesel motor. When I was told this, I was more than a little surprised. This vehicle is huge. It had seven seats and room behind those seven seats for not very much but when the back row was lying flat, there was enough room to put in two sets of golf clubs and luggage. I wouldn’t want to take the trundlers as that would probably fill the car up completely.

This thing is 2.3 tonnes. It’s not small, as I have said, and has enormous wheels, but with this little motor, it gets up and goes like a V6. I was pleasantly surprised with how much oomph it had. I understand it puts out 147 kw of power which is a lot of power coming out of a very small engine and 430 nm of torque. When coupled with the 8-speed auto, it’s impressive. You’re never going to drag anyone off at the lights – if you want to do that get the supercharged V8 version which puts out 386 kw and goes like stink. You’ll pay $214,000 base price for this and then some for the extras.

The fuel economy is pretty reasonable but might be hampered by the weight of the vehicle. The car I drove only had 70 kms on the clock and would be much more economical once run in. This is the smallest motor in the Defender series.

We took it on the usual test route which is over onto the Coromandel Peninsula. It pulled well going up the hill but being such a big car, it was roly-poly on the corners. I have to keep reminding myself that this is a big off-road vehicle with enormous wheels and it’s not going to sit on the road like an ordinary road-going vehicle.

It has all the bells and whistles in the cabin. It looks like it has a ton of off-road features and the tyres that were on the car were off-road tyres. I am told that these cars are in their element when they are in the wet and offroad, but I wasn’t game to find out. I suspect 90% of these will never go off-road unless they cut the corner across the garden by mistake. The off-road tyres are noisy, and I felt the road holding capabilities weren’t quite as good as a good road tyre. I appreciate the off-road tyres pay homage to the Land Rover DNA, but I think they would be better using a large road tyre, quieter and possibly better at holding on in the wet.

This vehicle is a far cry from the Land Rover Series I and II as you are able to tackle the great outdoors in supreme comfort with a 10 speaker sound system pumping out 400 watts of surround sound. It also had more USB ports than it had seats for people. There were USB ports all over the car in odd little nooks and crannies, shelves and cubbyholes.

Land Rover has paid homage to the original Land Rover by putting plastic versions of the treadplate on the bonnet and in the back of the vehicle. There are also rivets in various parts of the car, again a tug of the forelock to the original vehicle.

Whilst old Land Rovers are attracting massive amounts of money, I suspect that this Land Rover won’t go down in history as an icon, but it’s certainly a very pleasant drive. However, that will be determined by the public reaction to this model. I still liked it.

* David O’Neill is a Hamilton barrister and a real car enthusiast. That means he might forget your name but never the car you drive.