RE: Land Rover Defender production ceases

[skyrover]

yellowjack said:

I'll be sad to see them go, and fear that whatever replaces them will be more 'car' and far less 'truck, utility' and therefore less suited to military service. Progress is progress though, eh?.

It's not really "progress" though is it?

It will be giving up one market for another, so it's more like sidestepping.

[Escort Si-130]

They say never meet your heros as you may be disappointed. I was with the Defender. didn't like the driving position at all, loved them growing up, but when it came to driving them; it really wasn't a nice experience, especially being over 6ft tall.
I guess the new ones may have updated a bit, but still primitive.

[skyrover]

Escort Si-130 said:

They say never meet your heros as you may be disappointed. I was with the Defender. didn't like the driving position at all, loved them growing up, but when it came to driving them; it really wasn't a nice experience, especially being over 6ft tall.
I guess the new ones may have updated a bit, but still primitive.

The problem is not necessarily with the fundamental concept, but the fact that in order to keep costs down, Land Rover never really addressed the ergonomics problems.

Adding 6 inches to the interior width, and sliding the seat further back would transform the vehicle.

Here is a bulkhead that has been widened 6 inches either side






The beauty of the Defender is that you can chop and change it however you like.

Edited by skyrover on Thursday 4th February 08:58

[DonkeyApple]

skyrover said:

The problem is not necessarily with the fundamental concept, but the fact that in order to keep costs down, Land Rover never really addressed the ergonomics problems.

Adding 6 inches to the interior width, and sliding the seat further back would transform the vehicle.

I suspect that as that is partly what they did with the Range Rover that they felt customers had an even choice to chose road comfort with off-road ability or trade that road comfort for much more utility? But in hindsight, that wider prototype from the 80s(?) probably would have been a smart move that allowed them to really capitalise on their primary 21st century buying demographic which is the urban dweller wanting something a bit more fun than the ubiquitous modern cars.

But people do forget that unlike the Japanese competition, one of the Land Rovers most successful competitors for a very long time was its other car the Range Rover so not exactly a huge loss. Plus, for almost the entire history of the Land Rover the single biggest client by an absolute mile was the British Government. The other thing people forget is that the population of Land Rovers around the globe correlates rather perfectly with the pink areas on the Times map of the world. They were selling them for years in markets where their competition was locked out but as each country gained independence from the Empire the sales slumped and continued to decline rapidly in the face of both the arrival of competition and the desire of the newly freed people to not buy symbols of their colonial past. Then in the 80s the Govt sold off all the utilities. Overnight they became cost accountable and free to choose from the open market. They didn't choose Land Rover and that market slumped and continued to decline to a negligent level. And the final nail in the coffin was obviously when the Govt stopped buying them for the MOD. That then just left the key buyer as the lifestyle individual or retail business. And arguably, as you say, if the cabin space had been a little more 'post war' then they may have been able to do what the G wagon did and push upmarket to justify their survival.

But for a product that was starved of investment almost all its life it has had the most phenomenal run and I very much suspect that once the tooling is set up in India you'll be able to buy them as kits in the UK much the same way the UK used to export all of them as kits to the overseas markets for local assembly.

I really don't think we've seen the end of these cars in the UK.

[skyrover]

As long as they keep hammering out the parts, i'm happy

Don't make me start swapping in Jeep/Chevrolet parts instead land rover... Oh wait, I already did