RE: Land Rover Defender | Frankfurt 2019

[AB1canotbee]

GreyGray said:

I think it has lost what made the Defender iconic - utility, simplicity, a clarity of purpose. For me they have just made another SUV to look good on the school run, which I understand from a business perspective. However for me it is a Defender in name only, and I'm disappointed.

At last, somebody has something sensible to say!
I agree.I bet most of the contributors here have no idea about real farmers or "off-roaders judging from the comments here.This must be one of the ugliest cars in recent years considering how long they have had to get it right.It looks like a cross between a breadmaker and a jukebox.No ,I wasn't expecting a clone of Defender, but this is a joke.I only hope that LR get the reliability sorted before it goes out for sale.If they do they might have a chance against the competition, although they will have no problems selling to the "Chelsea Set".....even after Brexit [if that ever happens ?!]

Good luck LR anyway and I amsure [as someone else said here] it will grow on you eventually.

[unsprung]

Max_Torque said:

unsprung said:

A Preliminary Look Round the Gubbins

There's nothing like a full-on review, on road and off, to assess a vehicle like Defender. This article isn't that. But it does reveal some interesting bits and bobs.

"One thing I have to give Land Rover lots of credit for is how its engineers were able to tuck much of the drivetrain—especially the two-speed transfer case and front and rear driveshafts—so high up."

"When traversing off-road terrain, you want your vehicle to have as many tires on the ground as possible to maximize grip. Independent suspensions with short control arms, like the design on the new Defender, simply don’t allow much flex, and the result is tires lifting off from terra firma."

article here
https://jalopnik.com/what-i-found-when-i-crawled-u...

Another person (the author of that article) who doesn't understand the simple correlation difference between roll stiffness and axle articulation. This must be where 300 gets his info :-)

The author is known to build and run multiple 4x4 vehicles, so I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss him.

Your comment sounds like it could be awfully close to another that I've been told here on PH -- that the Datsun 240Z, as we in the West know it, was developed to fulfil the discerning requirements of posh households of the British Commonwealth -- a market of some 5000 vehicles -- and that the story of selling dozens of times more units in the US, at the direction of Yutaka Katayama, is a sort of cover-up in which all motoring titles on both sides of the Atlantic, are responsible for propagating. lol, I dined out for weeks on that one!

[NomduJour]

unsprung said:

The author is known to build and run multiple 4x4 vehicles, so I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss him.

In which case you might hope he had a basic understanding of how Land Rover air suspension works.

[anonymous-user]

NomduJour said:

unsprung said:

The author is known to build and run multiple 4x4 vehicles, so I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss him.

In which case you might hope he had a basic understanding of how Land Rover air suspension works.

it's got nothing to do with landrovers, or air, or beam axles or anything in fact, and everything to do with simple spring rates:

Immagine you have suspension, where the springs at each corner have a rate of 100 N/mm.

how much force does it take to displace the suspension by 10 mm?

Now double the spring rate to 200 n/mm, how much force now does it take to move the suspension by the same amount?


Simples.

[thecremeegg]

AB1canotbee said:

At last, somebody has something sensible to say!
I agree.I bet most of the contributors here have no idea about real farmers or "off-roaders judging from the comments here.This must be one of the ugliest cars in recent years considering how long they have had to get it right.It looks like a cross between a breadmaker and a jukebox.No ,I wasn't expecting a clone of Defender, but this is a joke.I only hope that LR get the reliability sorted before it goes out for sale.If they do they might have a chance against the competition, although they will have no problems selling to the "Chelsea Set".....even after Brexit [if that ever happens ?!]

Good luck LR anyway and I amsure [as someone else said here] it will grow on you eventually.

Farmers haven't bought defenders for years, they all either drive Discos or L200s/Hiluxs.
The defender has been a fashion statement for the last 20 years, this new one is a fitting replacement.

[NomduJour]

Max_Torque said:

it's got nothing to do with landrovers, or air, or beam axles or anything in fact, and everything to do with simple spring rates

Obviously, but the arrangement of having air springs linked across an axle means the unloaded wheel is forced down as the opposite one is forced up.

[anonymous-user]

NomduJour said:

Max_Torque said:

it's got nothing to do with landrovers, or air, or beam axles or anything in fact, and everything to do with simple spring rates

Obviously, but the arrangement of having air springs linked across an axle means the unloaded wheel is forced down as the opposite one is forced up.

oh god, please don't start sounding like 300!

For the last time "the other end being forced down" is both erroneous and irrelevant (and is nothing to do with only beam axles and everything to do with roll centres and geometry). If you have an axle where the other end is "forced down" let's say by 50%, then for any given cross axle rate, you need to start with individual springs of twice the spring rate per corner, so the ends result is the same!


In JLR case, with cross linked air springs, all that does is to effectively lower the cross axle rate for any given wheel rate. That can also be done by any number of other architectures and methods, from disconnectable or active anti-roll bars, to highly variable roll centre geometries etc.

[NomduJour]

Yeah, I get the point - the effective rate is lowered by the air in the compressed side being able to move across into the uncompressed side, rather than the unloaded side being magically pressed into the floor.

[The Vambo]

What's a beam?

[DonkeyApple]

Max_Torque said:

NomduJour said:

unsprung said:

The author is known to build and run multiple 4x4 vehicles, so I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss him.

In which case you might hope he had a basic understanding of how Land Rover air suspension works.

it's got nothing to do with landrovers, or air, or beam axles or anything in fact, and everything to do with simple spring rates:

Immagine you have suspension, where the springs at each corner have a rate of 100 N/mm.

how much force does it take to displace the suspension by 10 mm?

Now double the spring rate to 200 n/mm, how much force now does it take to move the suspension by the same amount?


Simples.

ladder chassis?

[Bill]

DonkeyApple said:

Stuff about Ned Ryerson

[gizlaroc]

DonkeyApple said:

The real problem is actually who would you get to play Ned Ryerson? You’d need someone who’s naturally annoying and will just bang on and on and on regardless of anything at all that happens around them. Just saying the exact same thing and oblivious to the reactions of others.

I think a remake and modern interpretation of GHD is a lovely idea. The idea of a customer never being able to leave town because every morning his car has to be returned to the dealer to fix a minor but persistent niggle that no one can fix. But it’s a non starter without a Ned Ryerson and it’s implausible that you could ever find such a person.

[CubanPete]

For those that think the last defender was both cheap, and something you would put a sheep in and attack with the hose, have you actually looked?



https://rover.ebay.com/rover/0/0/0?mpre=https%3A%2...

The land rovers farmers use for this are the 30+ year old ones..

[DonkeyApple]

CubanPete said:

For those that think the last defender was both cheap, and something you would put a sheep in and attack with the hose, have you actually looked?

https://rover.ebay.com/rover/0/0/0?mpre=https%3A%2...

The land rovers farmers use for this are the 30+ year old ones..

That car and the tens of thousands like it that were bought in the final decade of production purely for fun by people who lived in urban/suburban environments doesn’t actually exist. It’s fake news designed to prevent Welsh sheep farmers from being able to replace their cars every 3 years and starve them out.

[mat205125]

DonkeyApple said:

CubanPete said:

For those that think the last defender was both cheap, and something you would put a sheep in and attack with the hose, have you actually looked?

https://rover.ebay.com/rover/0/0/0?mpre=https%3A%2...

The land rovers farmers use for this are the 30+ year old ones..

That car and the tens of thousands like it that were bought in the final decade of production purely for fun by people who lived in urban/suburban environments doesn’t actually exist. It’s fake news designed to prevent Welsh sheep farmers from being able to replace their cars every 3 years and starve them out.

That's the vehicles moving up the food chain I guess.

Battered white transits are now bodykitted T6 transporters for brickys

Welsh farmers have the Amarok pick ups instead of Defenders

[soxboy]

There's a further interesting article on AROnline about the new Defender from an ex-LR employee (sorry unable to post link), basically saying they've tried a number of times to make the business case for a more utilitarian model work and it's never stacked up.

[gileshudson]

I'm no car designer, and certainly no graphic designer, so my Photoshop mockup is shoddy to say the least, but I'd have liked to see more of the old much-loved Defender look at the front, with a full round headlight...

[unsprung]

Regarding a pickup version of the new Defender:

A "senior" source at JLR has confirmed that this has been dropped from the range. Said source has an interesting explanation of why. I'll leave it to you to decide how interesting.

https://www.motoring.com.au/new-land-rover-defende...

(apologies if old hat)

[Mammasaid]

unsprung said:

Regarding a pickup version of the new Defender:

A "senior" source at JLR has confirmed that this has been dropped from the range. Said source has an interesting explanation of why. I'll leave it to you to decide how interesting.

https://www.motoring.com.au/new-land-rover-defende...

(apologies if old hat)

It was always very unlikely as soon as they'd made the switch to a monocoque design. It's a lot harder to chop into and maintain rigidity.

[oop north]

CubanPete said:

For those that think the last defender was both cheap, and something you would put a sheep in and attack with the hose, have you actually looked?



https://rover.ebay.com/rover/0/0/0?mpre=https%3A%2...

The land rovers farmers use for this are the 30+ year old ones..

The landmark 110 was £62k before any extras and the V8 was £150k though the base 110 was around 33k I think. Though “base” was very much the word