The end is coming...

[western]

I'm not bothered what JLR do with the existing Defender, my '89 110 will live for a long time on it's new chassis

[muddy]

Many utilities round me have new ford rangers and to be fair they look good and capable.

As for the new defender a longer wheelbase disco with single or double cab aluminium shell like the new RR but with a separate pickup back, coil or air, plastic or leather interior and the same engines.

Let's face it how many other 4x4 commercials actually have a full length van body? With a pick up and truck man top you can actually get items as large as the bed in the back unlike a defenderyet still hose it out.

Common running gear and front end panels would hopefully keep costs down and you can spec it up with bits on the shelf.

It would be dear but what isn't now? A wild track ford ranger is well over 30k and a gator can easily be 13k plus. Neither can do both serious off roading and tow 4 ton of beastys to the mart so farmers suffer with a defender or buy both anyway.

If you were to unveil a new underpowered, cramped, slow, unsafe and reasonably expensive vehicle to the current market very few people would even look twice at it so why do JLR sell one?

Will

[Plumber]

JLR's problem, as you can see from reading comments on here and other 4x4 forums, is that the new Defender will have to be many things to many people. Some want a hauler, while others want a cheap Evoque - and everything in between. JLR have been crazy not to make a Yeti (some may say amazingly stupid) as they could have sold them before they were made! If they miss the boat with replacing the Defender (and they had better get a move on) then some other manufacturer will do it - maybe VW. Clearly there is a market, but JLR seem to want to make only upmarket cars now. Look at the price of an Evoque, it's madness, and don't even get me started on how JLR's products cross one another and compete with themselves. As 'Deep' says earlier, a new Defender should definitely be modular, and I think JLR 'get' that. That way, you can build what you want - a hauler or a smart carpet-based soft roader. I love the idea of electric wheel motors to 'make up' the 4WD system, and I hope that JLR can see the appeal and the simplicity.

[wack61]

All this emissions is utter BS

Yes we needed to get away from the black snot weekender that was London in 1975 but we've long since passed that point

Anything from now on is all to do with economics, develop a new engine nobody wants but make them buy it by banning all previous engines from entering cities

Make people buy new cars by making a non essential system (abs & airbag) a MOT failure

I deliver truck parts for a living, I use a 2007 iveco daily that has 230,000 miles on it, a recent MOT told me what I thought, it's fine and I don't need to change it, the MoT tester actually swore when he looked at the mileometer , having spent 1/2 an hour tapping and crawling around under it he thought it'd done 50,000 miles

The low brake pad warning light is on the same system as "your brakes have failed you're going to die" a big red light on the dash, I had to get the pads changed or it would have failed, they had 10,000 miles on them before they were anything like worn out

The truck industry is on overtime all across Europe because nobody wants euro 6 , they're registering as many new trucks as they can before the deadline at the end of the year

[Plumber]

I know it's a bit 'out there', but I posted this on a LR forum a few years back (even before LR announced the end of the Defender), if everyone is so miffed about the demise of the Defender, it wouldn't be too difficult to start up a company similar to Foers Ibex. If you could galvanise (see what i did there?) 5,000 people into investing £5,000 each into a venture, then that's a £25,000,000 start. £25m buys you a lot of tooling, production line, and equipment. The vehicle would have to be chassis-based, modular, and all the components bought in (rather than manufactured from scratch). It would have to be designed to sell, so no pandering to a Chairman's design wishes. The driving position would have to be central, so it appeals to UK and foreign buyers, and all variants should be offered, like automatic etc. You could 'build' what you want (for the life of me I have yet to understand why LR never offered an automatic Defender, apart from the 50th). Perhaps plastic panels rather than steel or aluminium; perhaps electric wheel motors; perhaps a ragtop or a beach buggy. It's do-able...you just need 5,000 people with £5k each to get the project started. I have £5k invested in shares which isn't doing a lot, and my building society savings are doing nothing except getting eaten by inflation. We're fortunate that we live in a country that is bursting with mechanical-engineering talent and supplies. If you have the money and the help, you can build a car in your garage in a week...all the bits are available online and through the post. Crazy idea, isn't it? Is it?..

[nickwilliams]

£25m would go almost nowhere in setting up a new car manufacturing company. You'll be lucky if you only burn half that in wages in the first year.

Put a zero on the end and you might be getting somewhere close.

[Plumber]

Yes, you may well be right. Foers Ibex (with one of the worst websites in the world!) do it for a lot less, and 100 people at £25,000 per annum each would actually mean an annual wage bill of £2.5 million, but I understand what you're saying.

[Oakmaster]

From a Faceache page called:

Landrover - Defender

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151757261407173&set=pb.204314977172.-2207520000.1383897858.&type=3&theater

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151599576182173&set=pb.204314977172.-2207520000.1383897888.&type=3&theater

[Plumber]

I once ran a Defender website (back when I had time on my hands). It got popular, and then one day out of the blue, I got a phone call from a lady at Land Rover. She asked me if I wanted to be in an 8-person forum, due to meet in London in a few days, to see plans of the new Defender and to evaluate its appeal. Unfortunately, I was working that day and couldn't possibly get to London. But we got into a chat, and I asked her if the middle picture here...

http://thealphablogat.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/land-rover-defender-concept.html

...was a good idea of what it would look like. She was quite emphatic that it would not (this pic was on my website, and she had seen it). She said it wouldn't be boxy like the one in the photo, but much more streamlined. I said something along the lines of 'If it looks like that, then it would be popular'. Again, she said drawings of the intended Defender weren't anything like it (it was a Ford Bronco concept onto which someone had pasted a RR grille, I think). Then the DC100 surfaced. I must stop believing what women tell me. In her defence, I suppose any design for a Defender replacement is going to be similar to that pic, and to the DC100. I just wish JLR would get on with it. As every day passes, another manufacturer might fill the slot.

[Tanuki]

£25m would go almost nowhere in setting up a new car manufacturing company. You'll be lucky if you only burn half that in wages in the first year.

Put a zero on the end and you might be getting somewhere close.

Yes, when you add in the hassle of putting a vehicle through mandatory emissions/noise/crash-testing, then setting up a dealer/support network - the costs are truly horrendous!

Remember that the people you're selling to are _not_ going to be the hardcore off-roaders: there's no real money there. You need to produce something that's going to sell to the utility-companies, public-services like the Police/Ambulance/Fire-services, the AA/RAC/airport-operators, RNLI, forestry/tree-surgeon types. Maybe the MoD and non-governmental 'relief agencies' too.

Such people don't really care about long-life: they want something that will last 5 years/100,000 miles on a fleet-lease deal, with lowest-cost servicing and quick fix-it-when-it-breaks support - then they sell them on.

And then people like us buy them.

So we need something attractive enough to sell to this commercial/business fleet market-sector if we're going to get a future supply of used vehicles to play with!

[Tanuki]

Yes, you may well be right. Foers Ibex (with one of the worst websites in the world!) do it for a lot less, and 100 people at £25,000 per annum each would actually mean an annual wage bill of £2.5 million, but I understand what you're saying.

If you're paying someone £25,000/year then when you add in the employers national-insurance, pension, personal-injury insurance, sick-pay, cover for when said person's sick/pregnant/on-maternity-leave and such the final cost comes up to more like £50K/year.

[Big.Mike]

£25m would go almost nowhere in setting up a new car manufacturing company. You'll be lucky if you only burn half that in wages in the first year.

Put a zero on the end and you might be getting somewhere close.

Erm, two zeros at least, they spend £billions on "Platforms" now, which is why the new Defender will have to be:

1. Built on the current Discovery/RR platform.

2. Built on a Tata platform. (Tata Safari anyone?)

3. Built on a 3rd party platform (really unlikely)

4. Built on the current Chassis in a far off land where passing you driving test means driving forwards 100 metres and backwards 100 meters and never ever sold to the likes of you and me.

If you want a "new" Defender as we know it after 2015 it'll have to be an Ibex, which wouldn't actually be that bad a world:

I like this BTW thanks Plumber:

Cheers,

Mike

[Bowie69]

If it looked like the last one I don't think many would complain, would they?

[Plumber]

Bowie69, that's what I said to the lady at Land Rover. She didn't say she hated it, but she said it was too boxy, and that their design (which turned out to be the DC100) was more streamlined. Well, not much, it turns out! The Ford Bronco concept (with the RR front) has received good feedback on websites all around the world. I got emails asking if it was indeed going to be the new Defender, and that it was very acceptable if so. Some said it was too 'Hummer' though. Personally, I like it. I'd also like the DC100 if they make it a tad longer and change the grille.

People on my site also liked the Jeep concepts: