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Thoughts and musings on the new defender


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The inside of my 110 is currently a muddy soaking wet place. Its a complete mess after spending two days in this pouring rain in muddy fields finding and fixing a water leak. I cant see anyone wanting to get the new defender in this state or actually beimg able to clean it properly afterwards!

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20 hours ago, deep said:

Nice to see the back tyre aired down a little and interesting to see the rear locker is triggered by a spinning front wheel.  Surely it can't be popping in and out as quickly as the brakes come on and off though?  I'd love to see one in real action - I'll pick the track though!

I did a LR Experience day in a D5 and was impressed with how it managed the locking rear diff - it would lock at a standstill (or at least the display showed it as locked) to help pull away, and disengage as you turned to help it get round corners. It would disengage going downhill to ensure it didn't push it off course apparently,  which seemed a little un-intuitive to me. Certainly worked well though on slippery but solid based ground.

It was constantly locking and unlocking as you drove - not like an ARB where you just stick it in for a difficult section and then take it out again. 

Have to say I was amazed by it's ability (still looks awful though) and I think the new Defender will be a very capable vehicle, it's just a shame it's not anything like the old one.

Rich

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4 hours ago, reb78 said:

The inside of my 110 is currently a muddy soaking wet place. Its a complete mess after spending two days in this pouring rain in muddy fields finding and fixing a water leak. I cant see anyone wanting to get the new defender in this state or actually beimg able to clean it properly afterwards!

To be fair, you'd say the same about any new vehicle, including a late former Defender.  It's been a long time since cars came standard with bare metal interiors.  On the other hand, the options for the new Defender do include meaty rubber protection for the load space (washable rubber floors are standard up front).  Having said that, the situation you describe does seem to be a more natural habitat for the older design!

Sorry about the pouring rain.  We're enjoying the best drought in years around here.  So nice to be warm and dry for a while.

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Was I the only one thinking how cringe worthy that video was with the entirely contrived super safe scenario on terrain few modern hatch backs, let alone  MPV's or SUV's would struggle with?
The astonishing  lack of wheel travel for a supposed off roader is exactly what many here were discussing 40 - 60 pages ago. There were no surprises there, the lack of a front locking differential is as inexcusable as the exhaust routing and still remains baffling to me.

Contrary to popular belief on this forum, that Freelanderesque lurching from side to side is a incredibly bad and dangerous trait in an off road vehicle and is purely a result of a management with no interest in the product it was supposedly replacing. I bet there are engineers at JLR who had very different and more capable alternatives that were dismissed.

The massive roll stiffness in the suspension obviously engineered and optimised for on highway prowess could have had disconnecting antiroll bars like other mass manufacturers such as Jeep or Nissan amongst others use to optimise for any given terrain.  They could have cross linked the airbags with adequately sized pipes and valves. They had to engineer new subframes anyway, why didn't they put longer control arms in with more clearance and room for an exhaust? The decision to retain the suspension from the Range Rover and Discovery was a really bad long term idea for the Defender replacement in my opinion but I suppose it allowed them to build a 'new' vehicle for very little cost but charge a premium for it by leeching off the icon. I just think if it can't 'walk the walk', it'll never be taken seriously as an off roader, regardless of the fortunes that marketing will throw at it to claim otherwise.

I see everything about the defender replacement aimed squarely at the discovery buyer. Not one single piece of off highway orientated technology has been launched with a view to increase off road prowess. The part about opening and closing the doors is pure garbage with reference to being unable to do so on other vehicles, certainly those built nowadays. You could take any modern hatchback and do exactly the same thing.

Great salesman in the video, but surely explaining the basics of a traction control system which every vehicle produced must have by law, has been around for 30 years and is in no way peculiar to Land Rover was verging on insulting to a prospective Defender purchaser? His explanation and enthusiasm was good, imagine his speech were it describing something awesome and unique and not just some fancy JLR funded coding for a few of the 85 or so ECU's. I'd wager a 1920's Ford would have driven there. Are we really looking at a century of off highway vehicle development here?

Cheers to Naks for getting the thread back on topic.

Edited by Jamie_grieve
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The cynic in me (after seeing the modified gear stick / fiddle brakes) wonders how much of the vehicle was "modified for safety". Having been involved in some electronics for the film industry they're not adverse (at least on big budget block busters) for completely ripping a vehicle to shreds. The example I had in mind was a £250k car that they dropped the gearbox, replaced the steering and then reinstalled the gearbox backwards in the vehicle so they could do >100mph in reverse...

Suffice to say they wrote off a few vehicles :ph34r:

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I thought they weren't allowed to let a car advert incite speeding or dangerous driving? Atleast it's 3 years before the first MOT so you'll get a bit of a run out of it. Fun advert, bit like the start of the A-team but "Modified for safety" says it all really. Been quoted £15,500 to repair my pickup after it's minor bump, insurance are thinking of writing it off :angry2:

They say the a-team van used to have bleach put on the tyres to make them smoke when they span as it didn't have the power to do it otherwise :lol:

Edited by Cynic-al
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27 minutes ago, Cynic-al said:

I thought they weren't allowed to let a car advert incite speeding or dangerous driving? Atleast it's 3 years before the first MOT so you'll get a bit of a run out of it. Fun advert, bit like the start of the A-team but "Modified for safety" says it all really. Been quoted £15,500 to repair my pickup after it's minor bump, insurance are thinking of writing it off :angry2:

They say the a-team van used to have bleach put on the tyres to make them smoke when they span as it didn't have the power to do it otherwise :lol:

Modified for safety I'm assuming is legal-speak for "we fitted a cage and bucket seats so as to keep the stunt driver alive - don't do this at home", and I guess they can show it because it's behind-the-scenes stunt footage rather than an outright advert making claims that you can do this sort of thing right out of the showroom. Some car & bike commercials say "professional driver on a closed course - do not attempt" even for plain old "sweeping round a bend" shots :rolleyes: because someone somewhere will stack it & sue them.

Bleach/chlorine on the tyres is the standard way to reduce grip for burnouts, I believe they do it in drag racing (or maybe used to) so you can warm the tyres without shooting off down the track :lol: ironically oil will actually make tyres stickier, when I worked at a kart track if an engine let go or dropped oil on track all the lap-times dropped and the track got very coated with rubber over the course of the event. Water made it like ice (painted floor, slick tyres).

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Possibly the biggest insult for poor old Land Rover is when this image appeared on my screen I thought it was 3 Isuzu Troopers jumping :o Although in the 2 tone bodywork they actually look a bit like Suzuki Vitaras. Both great vehicles before this gets heated... :D

defender.jpg.6ef6f36ec793fb7a0f9c9fb36be7c1f0.jpg

By the way that's a screen shot of the video, don't sit there clicking it...

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1 hour ago, Cynic-al said:

Possibly the biggest insult for poor old Land Rover is when this image appeared on my screen I thought it was 3 Isuzu Troopers jumping :o Although in the 2 tone bodywork they actually look a bit like Suzuki Vitaras. Both great vehicles before this gets heated... :D

defender.jpg.6ef6f36ec793fb7a0f9c9fb36be7c1f0.jpg

By the way that's a screen shot of the video, don't sit there clicking it...

I thought they were 1990s (2000s?) era Shoguns at first glance.

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14 minutes ago, Red90 said:

I wonder how many Defenders they destroyed.

Probably a collection of pre-production prototypes that can't be used/sold and were due to be crushed anyway. Mate of mine had the job of doing donuts all day in F-Type jags at Silverstone Classic, said they were all pre-production and due to be crushed after they'd served their purpose. They looked pukka but a lot of the equipment wasn't there, switches not connected etc.

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2 hours ago, Cynic-al said:

Possibly the biggest insult for poor old Land Rover is when this image appeared on my screen I thought it was 3 Isuzu Troopers jumping :o Although in the 2 tone bodywork they actually look a bit like Suzuki Vitaras. Both great vehicles before this gets heated..

Yeah, Shoguns/Pajeros for me ...... 

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My thoughts are why didn't they try release this when they were due to launch it?  It's been a few months and the impact of that trailer released earlier or even delaying the launch against what we've been fed so far ( which is slow moving convoys of americans in wrap arounds and artistic shots of the desert ) is like chalk and cheese.

 

It could be the kid in me, the music and the association with JB, but that video made me smile with a twang of excitement.


 

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5 minutes ago, Badger110 said:

My thoughts are why didn't they try release this when they were due to launch it?  It's been a few months and the impact of that trailer released earlier or even delaying the launch against what we've been fed so far ( which is slow moving convoys of americans in wrap arounds and artistic shots of the desert ) is like chalk and cheese.

I agree, they should have just launched it with this and then handed out the order book.

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