RE: Land Rover Defender 110 Heritage: Driven
Discussion
rogerhudson said:
34,200 pounds? who'se having a laugh, get one of the ex-army Wolfs for about 14k and pimp it yourself. It could last for ever.
What is the highest mileage series LR, if a Volvo 1800 can get to a million than a Landie should do it easily.
Wolfs and all ex-mil LR's are massively over priced.What is the highest mileage series LR, if a Volvo 1800 can get to a million than a Landie should do it easily.
Ilovejapcrap said:
Work gave me one of these in the bad winter 2010?
It's ok but what do you do with your right arm.
I decided to cut mine off in the end
There is plenty of room. Certainly there are plenty of sports cars with no more elbow room.It's ok but what do you do with your right arm.
I decided to cut mine off in the end
Remember you sit close to the door for some rather critical reasons:
1. It allows you to have three seats across, but keep the vehicle width to a minimum. Narrow is good off road.
2. Sitting close to the door makes it easy to lean out and look at the front or rear wheels and the terrain. This is very useful when off road. If you sat far away from the window, this would be very difficult. And remember the Land Rover has it's origins in being an agricultural vehicle. So using it to do farm work, this can be most helpful.
e.g. a Defender ploughing.
Sandford said:
I still have nightmares about a convoy trip from Wolfenbuttel to Tidworth in an open top defender 110 at 50mph ALL the way, most of it in cold winter rain.
I had a particularly poor trip from Drawsko Pomorskie training area to Gutersloh, around 400 miles of utter agony in a 110.I was ready to burn it just outside Hanover.
Undoubtedly the most terrible vehicle I have ever driven; noisy,thirsty, uncomfortable and useless at anything that doesn't involve pretending to be Bear Grylls. Off nearly all of the motoring community's radar until last few years when , unaccountably , they became amazingly popular and are now seen more often in town than country - every farmer I know has something Japanese. It would , however, be my first choice of vehicle if I lived in a quarry and if my commute involved fording a river.
coppice said:
every farmer I know has something Japanese.
Most farmers I know don't have Jap, they have a Land Rover. And you only need to spend 30 mins in the York Dales, Wales, Peaks or the Lakes to see how many still use Land Rover's. They are everywhere.I don't deny there are more Jap trucks on farms these days. But it's hardly a whitewash.
Ditched buying/driving Landies after I swiftly sold my brand new Defender station wagon back in 2002. As another poster stated, it's driven by a Ford transit engine so isn't being killed off due to emissions more probably because it is at least 2 decades behind the Jap and American 4x4's and isn't a major profit centre due to the human element of building it.
Anything after a Series 3 is questionable!
Good riddance to it.
Anything after a Series 3 is questionable!
Good riddance to it.
300bhp/ton said:
I don't understand how some of you think they are no good on the road.
Maybe some of you still need driving lessons
As they drive fine and if you aren't 6 foot tall, they are perfectly comfortable too. Very good driving position and good seats.
They are awful on the road. Hopeless ergonomics, dreadful turning circle and comfort that would be unacceptable to a nomadic goat herder. Maybe some of you still need driving lessons
As they drive fine and if you aren't 6 foot tall, they are perfectly comfortable too. Very good driving position and good seats.
I don`t understand how you can think they anything other than woeful on the road.
kbf1981 said:
300bhp/ton said:
oldtimer2 said:
JLR has given the Land Rover the retirement celebration that it deserves. It has surely survived longer than anyone could have imagined. Its appeal was and remains classless. It is also very practical, with nice box shaped interior for stowing stuff (check out a Jeep for comparison) and it can tow stuff (again check out the Jeep)- and it can be bashed about unlike most other vehicles I can think of.
Stowage is poor in the Puma Defenders. So not sure why you think it's better than a Jeep.
ks.I own a 110 and rented a JK Unlimited for a couple weeks in the States recently. The 110 is vastly bigger in terms of cargo area.
The Defender is a wondrous machine, objectively poor if you compare it to most other means of on road transport but consistently brilliant in the rough + I am 6 2 and apart from a mildly numb right knee have had no problems driving tdi td5 and puma defenders for 100's miles at a time.
I shall always remember as a 14 year old boy our school 45 seater coach had got totally stuck on very muddy grass up in Norfolk, after the games were done one of the dads from the hosting school said ill sort that out attached his new X5 to the back of it and, well nothing happened apart from lots of wheel spin and a rather good V8 noise from the X5. Then my old man offers to have a go in our td5 110, hooks up the chain, first gear low box and it just pulled away with a little throttle and action from the traction control, across the field and up out of the steep entrance track onto the road. Inspiring machine that day and I feel an example of how defenders have developed their true following and status.
Ag
I shall always remember as a 14 year old boy our school 45 seater coach had got totally stuck on very muddy grass up in Norfolk, after the games were done one of the dads from the hosting school said ill sort that out attached his new X5 to the back of it and, well nothing happened apart from lots of wheel spin and a rather good V8 noise from the X5. Then my old man offers to have a go in our td5 110, hooks up the chain, first gear low box and it just pulled away with a little throttle and action from the traction control, across the field and up out of the steep entrance track onto the road. Inspiring machine that day and I feel an example of how defenders have developed their true following and status.
Ag
Deerfoot said:
300bhp/ton said:
I don't understand how some of you think they are no good on the road.
Maybe some of you still need driving lessons
As they drive fine and if you aren't 6 foot tall, they are perfectly comfortable too. Very good driving position and good seats.
They are awful on the road. Hopeless ergonomics, dreadful turning circle and comfort that would be unacceptable to a nomadic goat herder. Maybe some of you still need driving lessons
As they drive fine and if you aren't 6 foot tall, they are perfectly comfortable too. Very good driving position and good seats.
I don`t understand how you can think they anything other than woeful on the road.
A D90 might not be the smoothest ride, but that's due to the short wheelbase. They ride better than a Pug 106 however. D110's ride very well and the coil suspension makes them ride better than almost all of the Jap trucks which use leaf springs at the rear and high spring rates.
I also find the ergonomics generally very very good in a Land Rover. The steering wheel, pedal and seat location and the gear stick. They are all in comfortable places.
Standard turning circle isn't great on a 110, but it's a long vehicle. 90's are fine and if you adjust the steering stops they turn very very well. Much better than a lot of cars.
A 90 will easily have a smaller turning circle than a Range Rover and my Range Rover has a much better turning circle than my Camaro or my XJ-S had.
On road they are perfectly fine too and while they don't have the NVH levels of other 4x4's and cars, they corner just fine. A D90 is lighter with a lower centre of gravity than a Range Rover Classic or Disco 1 or 2 and will corner better than both. In fact you can really throw a 90 about on the country roads -- I know because I've done it loads and loads and loads.
If you could live with a 'sports car' or 1990's compact hatch, then a Defender is certainly no less comfortable or compromised for road use.
They handle just fine...
https://youtu.be/7PhrdRMtSUw
https://youtu.be/6kcaGKDh-ts
I've driven them a lot on road as well.
They are fking terrible. End of. But please somehow tell me how my own experiences and opinion is wrong because it doesn't sit right with yours.
I've lots of friends with them, they are toy cars for off roading and fun day driving, almost all have a Disco of some model to go with them. The Defenders are constantly needing stuff done to them, which then throws you at the mercy of the after market supply with quality being a lucky draw unless it comes in a blue box which means you can be 99% sure it's truly going to be ste quality. I couldn't be arsed with all of that.
They are great off road with decent tyres, you don't have to worry about denting panels etc and you don't care about scratches etc.
They can't pass crash tests, they can't pass emissions regs and Land Rover have kicked that can down the road since the Puma engine first came about.
It's time to celebrate its success and pray the company will remember those in the makings of the new Defender.
Which will have to take on the Hilux and the Wrangler and be better than both if its to truly be the king of the 4x4s
They are f
king terrible. End of. But please somehow tell me how my own experiences and opinion is wrong because it doesn't sit right with yours.I've lots of friends with them, they are toy cars for off roading and fun day driving, almost all have a Disco of some model to go with them. The Defenders are constantly needing stuff done to them, which then throws you at the mercy of the after market supply with quality being a lucky draw unless it comes in a blue box which means you can be 99% sure it's truly going to be s
te quality. I couldn't be arsed with all of that.They are great off road with decent tyres, you don't have to worry about denting panels etc and you don't care about scratches etc.
They can't pass crash tests, they can't pass emissions regs and Land Rover have kicked that can down the road since the Puma engine first came about.
It's time to celebrate its success and pray the company will remember those in the makings of the new Defender.
Which will have to take on the Hilux and the Wrangler and be better than both if its to truly be the king of the 4x4s
Drove the old school Land Rover 40-plus years ago... it was utterly dreadful even by the standards of the time, more tractor than car. OK, a Defender isn't quite the same thing, but surely the wave of Japanese imports in the early 90s should have killed it off then, with the Discovery acting as its replacement? LR are going to have a hard time replacing it with something else suitably utilitarian that also drives reasonably well.
300bhp/ton said:
DonkeyApple said:
Yup. Purely economics. To bring the spec up to meet modern customer expectations would lead to a price tag where there would be hardly any customers and if left as is then the revenue generated from the space used is dwarfed by the revenue the other LR models would generate using that space.
Not sure I agree it about spec and economics.There is no reason they couldn't update in one way or another. Jeep and Suzuki manage to sell body on frame off roaders just fine.
I think it's more to do with production techniques. The Defender is man power heavy, which means high cost.
The vehicle probably needed to change little, just how it fits together and how the production line works. That's what has stopped it. Plus I think the shift in image has already happened and the Defender no longer fits with what Land Rover want to be.
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