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[ The CAR ]
UNSTOPPABLE The Land Rover Defender is the great iconic off-roaders and now the new version looks set to follow in those hallowed footsteps. With its squared-off design with clean, straight lines and flat surfaces, it is an authentic 4X4 as uncompromising today as it was in the past
by Diego Tamone
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The new Defender for the 21st century was designed by Gerry McGovern, Chief Design Officer at Land Rover. A brilliant distillation of toughness and functionality with an instantly recognisable upright stance that includes many of the original’s iconic styling cues, including short overhangs front
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[ The CAR ]
L
egends often create myths. And equally often myths end up fuelling those same legends. The result is a positive kind of co-dependent relationship that creates both
appeal and charisma. The automotive sector is no exception. Legend has it, for instance, that the lines of the forbearer of the modern Defender were first drawn with a stick in the sand of Red Wharf Bay in Wales in the mid-1940s. Wielding that stick was Maurice Wilks, a pragmatic, earthbound engineer who had never paid the slightest heed to siren call of the design. He was very much a function rather than form-focused individual. And yet, oddly, he also designed one of the most iconic vehicles of the modern era. The Defender is also one of the most longlived models in automotive history. It was first was unveiled in April 1948 and only bowed out in January 2016 after racking up sales of over two million in its 68 glorious years. Even then, its retirement proved brief. Having been designed to go where no other vehicle dared, the Defender became a cult classic despite being very deliberately shorn of any aesthetic concessions whatsoever. This atypical 4X4 caused Land Rover more than a few sleepless nights as it struggled to give what had understandably become an obsolete model a future. But the Defender was endlessly venerated by its fans. It was an unprecedented vehicle. The man given the job of messing with this icon was Land Rover’s Chief Design Officer Gerry McGovern. Fittingly he has not only won every international design award on the go for his work but at the start of 2020, was awarded an OBE for it too. In other words, he was the only one capable of taking this hopelessly un-aerodynamic but much-loved off-roader, and evolving it into a stylistically and technologically refined new icon for the 21st century. But with the same old spirit. And the same DNA. Land Rover’s Exterior Design Director Massimo Frascella also had a hand in the job. He was the pen called into to put flesh on the bones of McGovern’s vision of the modern Defender. Upright of stance, robust, uncompromising, adventure-loving. Totally unique in other words. And yet more sophisticated and technologically leading-edge too. The Defender is now back in a choice of the classic 90 and 110 versions but with six different trim levels. Owners can choose from 300 or 400 bhp petrol engines or 200 and 240 bhp diesels. All are coupled with 8-speed ZF automatic transmission with dash-mounted gear shifter, twinspeed gearbox and electronic active differential for that allimportant off-road experience.
www.landrover.com
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Now available in classic 90 and 110 versions with a choice of six trim levels. Diesel and petrol engines are coupled with an 8-speed ZF automatic transmission. The iconic spare wheel at the rear is there too as is the side-opening boot door
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