2007 Defender Details announced

[Happyoldgit]

I dont mind all of that - my worry is the tie in between all the systems, it makes sense for a road car but not a heap off road, if theres a central canbus or opto running the show then life will get very entertaining later in the vehicles life - essentially rendering oldies beyond ecomomical repair and making them disposible..

all in all what every manufacturer strives for

Exactly!

[BogMonster]

My greatest concern is not with the electronicization of the engine but the possibility of too many body electrics - central locking, door sensors, leccy windows, leccy dashboards and bits etc.

I don't mind that so much - what I don't like is things that will make you "fail to proceed". If your leccy window breaks, the worst that will happen is you might get wet

I can tolerate complexity where it brings real benefits to me. Aircon, electric windows, central locking, a CD player, fuel injection on a V8, that sort of thing. What I can't be bothered with is things which seem to me to have no real use, e.g. stupid swivelly headlights, electric seats, traction control which doesn't work as well as an old fashioned difflock, in car DVD systems, etc etc etc.

Edited to add in car networking to my "bah humbug" list after reading Jez's post - I do not need my engine to know what the #kin instrument pack thinks the time of day is....

Edited August 24, 2006 by BogMonster

[SteveG]

Tell you what Luddites; vote with your feet and do not buy a new Defender. That will have Landrover worried, how many of you were planning, seriously, to buy a new Defender last week, before you saw the revisions? I thought so.

Now, wonder how many people have seen the forward facing seats, 20th century dash, 6-speed box, working heater and other refinements and are considering buying one next year. People who would not have considered such an agricultural machine previously.

Well said, a lot of LR enthusiasts seem to forget that Land Rover has to be profitable to survive. Profitable means supplying vehicles that people want to buy at cost plus.

Only thing that does tiddle me off about LR is their constant desire to sell in US and have the rest of the world sales profit margin subsidise this effort, especially with the current pound/dollar ratio. If LR want to be in US and benefit from sales volumes they should manufacture there and do it properly. Maybe use one of those factories that Ford is having to close down!

Cheers

Steve

[bill van snorkle]

they have engineers and designers????????

Really? and how long has this been going on? and why wasn't I told?

Bill.

[Hillbilly Raider]

Actually they do galvanise things like the body cappings nowadays, they just paint them as well. Galv body cappings were reintroduced in (I think) 2002.... and I've not seen one with corrosion problems on the cappings since then, compare that to the early Td5s which were terrible.

Tell me about it! remember my post on corrosion?

As for electrics... remember my fuel pump/ecu adventure in Italy a couple of years ago?

I was talking to a stealer a few days ago (now dont all go jumping down my throat at this , i am just repeating what i was told from his experiance!)

Most new purchaces ( spelling going haywire here) are by people who will change thier "car" every 3 years or so. SOME ( but not many) will keep it longer but we still get the " do you want to buy this new Range Rover/Freelander" letters through the post.( well i do)

Us ( and i use the word us only because i cant think of another at the mo) "offroaders" tend to buy secondhand, and although they do sell secondhand... MOST of their sales are new.and to the people who couldnt afford the new Disco/Range Rover/Freelander lifestyle look.

Now i am NOT saying that these new Defenders will NOT be offroaded by the likes of " us", what i am saying is that it will be when they are no longer fashionable and have been resold a few times and are therefore cheap enough to buy/modify/pull to bits/GET DIRTY!( and you can find the bits in a scrappy or Old Sod CHEAP)

Like so many here have said LR must make money some where and if the money comes from "the new car" brigade and they want the comfort of a "car" then what are they to do?

having said that i am betting my series will outlive myRaider !!!!

KISS i think is the saying?

[callum]

Tell you what Luddites; vote with your feet and do not buy a new Defender. That will have Landrover worried, how many of you were planning, seriously, to buy a new Defender last week, before you saw the revisions? I thought so.

Now, wonder how many people have seen the forward facing seats, 20th century dash, 6-speed box, working heater and other refinements and are considering buying one next year. People who would not have considered such an agricultural machine previously.

I have said it before and I will repeat it; Landrover do not give a flying monkey's gonads what you guys think. They care not if you will want to buy one when they are 10 years old and maintain it with County pattern parts. What is in it for them? They need to sell and maintain new units.

Landrover have not made these changes just to keep the designers and engineers occupied, they have made them because their market research says that is what people want to buy. I understand that Defender is a net money looser anyway - the cost of labour intensuve production exceeding the cost of automated RR production - they only keep the Defender on because they are such a good advertising tool. I suppose that this means that they are not in a position to offer more expensive, more powerful engines, super strong transmissions, galvanised chassis etc. as the price will skyrocket and loose even more money as the price of a car has to be competetive and therefor is more or less fixed.

If, as some of you are suggesting, the competition is so much better, go buy one.

[/rant]

Chris

i can understand what you are saying, progress must be made and a modern interior is a good step forward, even if they forgot to update around the steering column and still use 1970's stalks.

I think you ignore the part reputation plays though. As with a lot of british products, it is traded on reputation and does very well trading on that. i should imagine many of the sales of defender are based on what the brand has acheived and stood for in the past. assisting this currently are those who make use of thier vehicles in more extremem situations, winning motorsport events.

I would therefore suggest that enthusiasts are crucial to the reputation and therefore success of land rover and that in the eyes of land rover they really should matter. otherwise they will jump brand and one of the greatest adverts the company has, let us not forget the effeect this would have on the whole land rover range, will be gone.

You can only trade on a reputation for so long before people see through the carp and head elsewhere. A car with little merit, which is seen as having little merit is not so attractive as a one that at least appears to have merit.

A car that lasts forever is bad for business and perhaps a peak of durability has been reached. i think land rover has, to an extent shot itself in the foot.

time will tel if it was wearing steel toecaps.

[Guest diesel_jim]

I was thinking about this subject this morning, pondering how the "old" classic 90/110 (with a chest beating 200 or 300Tdi) has now become a thing of the past and the new fangled defender with the 2.4 Td4 has/will take the lead.

It reminds me of the USA, where the new Jeep could be classed as the equivalent of the new defender or disco3, BUT there are thousands of old jeeps still being wheeled/rebuilt/played with/modified by the people who don't want the newer stuff.

same as our defenders. i personally quite like the look of the new dash, but if/when i go across the Sahara somewhere, i'll use an older vehicle, probably something i've built myself, with a 300 or 2.8Tdi in it, no electronics etc. HD axles etc, all the sort of stuff you won't get on a new producion vehicle, and it'll be something i've had my oily hands all over, so i'll know the nuts and bolts inside out.

[GBMUD]

i can understand what you are saying, progress must be made and a modern interior is a good step forward, even if they forgot to update around the steering column and still use 1970's stalks.

I think you ignore the part reputation plays though. As with a lot of british products, it is traded on reputation and does very well trading on that. i should imagine many of the sales of defender are based on what the brand has acheived and stood for in the past. assisting this currently are those who make use of thier vehicles in more extremem situations, winning motorsport events.

Not at all. I hoped I had suggested that LR trade on the reputation of Defender and it's use by the army, utilities, coastguard, limited companies, forrestry commission etc. as a tool to sell the entire range. Therefor it is worth keeping on even as a loss leader - if that is the case.

I quite like the sticks. If they were to change them then they would put in the Montego ones that late 80s RRs had with the light and wiper delay switches that are carp and stop working at the forsat sign of mud/water. No, leave them alone!

Jim, I see what you are saying but... by the time you or I are likely to be buying one to take across desserts we will know which bits are vulnerable to failure and carry spare ones/know workarounds. We may even - and I genuinly believe it is only a matter of time - be able to plug in our PDA and diagnose engine/ECU/gearbox/elecric window faults that way. Air suspension is a good case. People worked out that it could be difficult and so change them for coils, problem solved. Megasquirt seems to be a simplified, user modifiable replacement for EFI. I see no reason why one could not employ a similar such system on a diesel engine, there-by bypassing potentially complex engine/gearbox/heated seat interface issues.

There will be progress (even if it is not in the direction we would like to see) and we need to accept that fact and learn to live with it - like people now do with EFI and are starting to with Td5 etc.

Chris

[JonR]

My niece came round today in her new Fiesta ST .

When I had a look inside, the first thing I noticed was the incredible similarity of the the dashboad to that of the new Defender.

I now understand why I don't like the new dashboard in the Defender. The design just doesn't fit in with the rest of the vehicle.

For such an iconic vehicle, they could have thought of something more appropriate.

Jon.

[Steve Hiatt]

they have engineers and designers????????

If they did exist wouldn't someone in the last 50 years have spent an afternoon designing a door that fitted?