Some very gratuitous videos of Land Rover Defenders in action. The company has been advertising the fact that 75% of its vehicles ever sold are still on the road. Now that is something I can get behind, the concept of design with no obsolescence. (I think I might have just coined a new ACL strapline.) If you think about it, the concept also applies to clothing made on Savile Row. The suits are passed down to sons and coveted by vintage buyers. I can see the adverts now, 78% of our suits are still in closets today.
Anyway enjoy the Defender out in the wild, in all of her glory.
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The commentary on this one (below) is amusing. Especially when he calls the Land Rover “her majesty’s finest piece of motoring excellence” and then proceeds to act as Australian as possible.
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My heart is still set on a Unimog 401 hardtop for my all-purpose utility vehicle, but that 6 wheeled 110 certainly made me pause…
Brilliant. Anyone in SF a client of Roverland near Brisbane in south city? Some great Rover talk happens there (and Citroen if the need arises….).
that shit is so ill… it’s the only car that i really love.
I love defenders so so so much, definitely one of my all time favorite cars. Also, Tom Ford is my favorite non-Top Gear (show), non-Tiff Needle presenter.
if you want to know why defenders are so awesome, start at the beginning:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFY_nb-4Wrk
for some real amazing defender action, check out the ’89 Camel Trophy across the amazon:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r91CtE6xHQ8
i sold my ’67 Land Rover 109 last year. i’ll get by with my ’89 range rover for the time being. waiting for the bottom to fall out of the used defender 110 market. they only brought in 500 110’s to the US and 25 to Canada in ’93. That was the only year they were sold new in the states. You can now import the 110’s from ’83 & ’84 from the UK though, so hopefully the prices will get more affordable.
They don’t call them the best 4×4 by far for nothing!
Land Rover Defender’s are truly one of a kind vehicles. I actually owned and restored a mustard yellow 1973 Land Rover Series III (that I recently sold). With a whopping 83 horsepower 4-cylinder engine, it could outgo, outtow, and outmaneuver pretty much any vehicle my fellow off-roading buddies had back in Tennessee.
It was one of the true loves of my life, and I still lament having sold it. Alas, the streets of New York were one area I would say Land Rover never intended the Series or Defenders to exist, not to say they couldn’t handle it.
Dont buy into the propoganda. The truth is that Land Rover has the worst reliability of any SUV. Check the statistics. It has been at the bottom for years. The only reason they have the 70% stat is that they have sold many to the UK
to the UK military in recent years. Sorry I pressed enter too early.
jacko –
have you ever owned a defender or non-luxury focused rover? if not, you’ve either got no idea about the reliability of these vehicles, or you’ve got no idea how to even use a ratchet set. i replaced the entire suspension set-up on my ’89 rover today in under two hours, springs, shocks and mounts. rovers are just as reliable as their owners….
The Delta Unit in the Army (circa late 70’s) picked the Puch as their go to vehicle. Here’s a version of it:
http://www.pinzgauer.com/shpics.php?table=vehicles&idnum=102
When Eric Haney was the tech advisor and writer on the TV series, “The Unit” he was able to get two of them for the series. When it looked like the series was gonna get canned Eric snatched one and some asshole from the show has the other one. Eric told me when the guy who selected the vehicle for Delta was asked why a Puch – – he said, Eric, I tried like hell to break it but couldn’t.
I love the 110 but it’s always interesting to see what the pros use.
Here’s a nice one for sale:
http://www.staufferclassics.com/pinzgauer_instock.php
Just the thing to drive around NYC.
http://www.copleymotorcars.com/index.html
Great dealership just west of Boston that specializes in Defender’s (and other fine makes)
At least for ’06 & ’07 the Land Rover ranked dead last in the JD Powers owner satisfaction survey. Maybe a lot of them are still on the road, but one would wonder how much it takes to keep them on the road.
Sorry, but Rovers are kinda garbage. Cool and with a “pedigree”, but they really aren’t that reliable. I’ve wheeled with the oldest Land Rover club in the US and believe me, these things aren’t all they’re cracked up to be.
Lucky for me I couldn’t afford a Series in college, and bought a beater of Land Cruiser FJ60 instead. It was a logging foreman’s truck and had something like 248,000 miles on it. I dropped in another motor (165k on that one) and drove her everywhere, racking up about 340,000 miles or so. Nary a problem for a $2500 truck. Yes, that’s about what I spent in total.
Later I got a beater FJ40 and wheeled that one hard too. Both have outlasted my friends’ Series trucks, and don’t destroy gearboxes and rust away at the frame like these things. There’s a reason the Taliban and Somali pirates drive Toyotas….
The current ride is a ’69 Chevy C10, which not-so-ironically has the same inline-six 235 that Toyota copied and dropped into Land Cruisers until 1992. Now that I can afford something better than a beater, the BJ40 is at the top of the list.