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Thoughts and musings on the new defender


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What do people expect with a new vehicle?  Almost all vehicles suffer long lists of reliability problems when a new model comes out, and LR reliability is renowned as being amongst the worst.  I understand their disappointment, but not their apparent surprise.  I just don’t comprehend why anyone would buy a new vehicle that has been in production for less than 18 months - they’re always lemons.

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11 hours ago, Bowie69 said:

....and another, though I think he is getting a bit carried away, plus attempting to not get banned from test driving any other LR vehicle 😄

Best quote yet though from a reviewer “about as much flex as an ironing board” 😉😉

All the jarring, tipping and bouncing makes it look like an extremely carp experience driving it off road - comfortable everywhere else, but...

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1 hour ago, Snagger said:

What do people expect with a new vehicle?  Almost all vehicles suffer long lists of reliability problems when a new model comes out, and LR reliability is renowned as being amongst the worst.  I understand their disappointment, but not their apparent surprise.  I just don’t comprehend why anyone would buy a new vehicle that has been in production for less than 18 months - they’re always lemons.

My E-class was, as far as I can tell, number ~5000 off the line. One minor production fault in the digital dash that was fixed swiftly, that's it. Far from a lemon.

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25 minutes ago, elbekko said:

My E-class was, as far as I can tell, number ~5000 off the line. One minor production fault in the digital dash that was fixed swiftly, that's it. Far from a lemon.

That’s unusually good.  But the German stereotype may have something to do with it.  Still, you get my point, I’m sure.

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I'd be very curious to see reviews of the original Defender when it was new, see how it compares.

Do agree that buying anything brand new in the 1st year of production is a risk, I also feel like JLR lately are always treading very close to the edge in terms of how much technology they can shoe-horn into a vehicle and make work properly but I guess that's how they can stay ahead of companies with 10x the R&D budget.

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1 hour ago, FridgeFreezer said:

I'd be very curious to see reviews of the original Defender when it was new, see how it compares.

Do agree that buying anything brand new in the 1st year of production is a risk, I also feel like JLR lately are always treading very close to the edge in terms of how much technology they can shoe-horn into a vehicle and make work properly but I guess that's how they can stay ahead of companies with 10x the R&D budget.

It will be interesting to see if they’ve solved the problem where a gentle wet grassy slope will bring it to a complete standstill. Previously no amount of fiddling with the various terrain options would get it to cope with the initial amount of wheelspin on every wheel.

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3 hours ago, FridgeFreezer said:

I'd be very curious to see reviews of the original Defender when it was new, see how it compares.

Do agree that buying anything brand new in the 1st year of production is a risk, I also feel like JLR lately are always treading very close to the edge in terms of how much technology they can shoe-horn into a vehicle and make work properly but I guess that's how they can stay ahead of companies with 10x the R&D budget.

Before my time, but I am sure there was much disquiet over the move to coil springs as everybody knew that the only sensible suspension system for a 4x4 is leaf springs. Same as there was outrage over the introduction of electronic engine control with the Td5 because everyone knew that clockwork is the only reliable system.

The wet grass question is an interesting one, it's a horrendously difficult surface to gain traction on as we all know. I'd guess that given the same conditions and tyre tread pattern, a new Defender with modern electronic traction control (via Terrain Response) and lockable centre/rear diffs would outperform an old one with the basic TC and a single lockable centre diff. But in reality the additional weight and wider tyres (even of the same pattern) may work against the newer model in that scenario.  

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7 hours ago, FridgeFreezer said:

I'd be very curious to see reviews of the original Defender when it was new, see how it compares.

Do agree that buying anything brand new in the 1st year of production is a risk, I also feel like JLR lately are always treading very close to the edge in terms of how much technology they can shoe-horn into a vehicle and make work properly but I guess that's how they can stay ahead of companies with 10x the R&D budget.

We had one of the very first 110s as a work vehicle.  It was a V8 hardtop with sliding windows and no power steering.  As far as I can remember, the only problem was a failed petrol pump at around 50,000 miles.  Bullet proof up till then and there were virtually no stories in the press about silly new car problems.  To be fair, if you took electronics and plastic external trim out of the equation (early 110s had none!), the new Defender isn't that bad either.  Um...

Of course, perspectives were different then.  Nobody expected all the oil to stay in and rain to stay out (though it was quite good), cared too much about transmission and road noise or expected Ferrari handling.  We used to fight over it at work because it was fun to drive, grunty for what it was and it laughed and laughed at the hopeless attempts of the alternatives in our fleet (Toyota and Isuzu) to keep up off-road.

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7 hours ago, landroversforever said:

I think the difficulty there comes in the fact that it was always just little changed. Even between S3 and the first 110 and 90s. 

The changes were reasonably significant though. Sure they still "looked" similar and some parts might have been backwards compatible. But really the 90/110 is a long way different from the Series.

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