The Landrovers Panterra | PH Review
Guess what: a small Dutch firm has beaten JLR to a fully electric 4x4. We drive it
Who knew there was a car industry in Amsterdam? Alright, it’s no Stuttgart or Detroit, but there’s a quiet revolution happening on its outskirts. Quite literally in the case of the car you see here. The Landrovers is, on the face of it, another name and badge to add to an increasing roster of restomodders. The world ain’t short of those – nor is it lacking modified Defenders. Yet there’s more to dig into here than you might expect.
The company is 15 years old and has reached 70 employees. Its total production has surpassed 250 cars, and it currently stands at 28 a year, each one taking 3,000 hours to piece together. While I’m bombarding you with numbers, 75 per cent of its sales are currently the car you likely expect upon first glimpsing a TLR product: housing a Corvette V8 – from a 450hp LS3 to a 650hp LT4 – beneath its bonnet and copious leather and aluminium inside, with a price tag of €382,500 (about £335,000) slapped on top. More if you get carried away with the bespoke potential on offer, as most customers do.
And the end result is likeable; rapid in a straight line, a fabulous soundtrack and just about good enough in corners. There are still some native Defender hang-ups – an enormous turning circle, marginal elbow room – but TLR scallops out more legroom via its own seat bases while numerous suspension options help rein in body roll. It’s hardly unique in its marketplace, but it’s appealing.
The other 25 per cent of its sales are where things get really interesting, though. The company was co-founded by pals Peter Zeisser and Daniel van Oort when they put together a modestly modified Land Rover to go adventuring in South Africa. The trip faltered, so they stayed at home and sold the car, finding an investor in the process (who’s still on their books). Seven years into TLR, they gained an additional co-owner in the shape of Frank Tijs. He came to them to electromod his Volkswagen T2 bus, but instead helped spark an electric revolution that led to the Panterra.
This is no mere powertrain transplant – it’s a rethink of what a Defender should be capable of. So while it uses the same donor shells that line TLR’s supply yard, everything changes beneath. There are new mounting points for fully independent suspension, necessary to manage the quad in-wheel motors. You’ve a choice of air or coilover springs. There’s a freshly electric steering system with a much tighter rack than before. And the small matter of a 600hp peak output…
The performance claims are blunted a little by its 2,900kg kerb weight (more, if you’ve gone doolally with the options) though it’s still a startling thing fully lit, whether you’ve flicked its F-Type era JLR gear selector into sport mode or not. But its greatest trick is being placid and polite on a more restrained throttle, with a linearity to the pedal’s operation that makes it a cinch in town, on motorways or anywhere in between. Dare take one of these off-road and its precise power delivery ought to be rather useful.
There are three brake regen levels and a fair chance you’ll keep their touchscreen menu awake to toggle through them on the fly. TLR developed its own software for the central display – indeed, almost every component outside of that gearlever has been designed in-house – and it’s quicker-witted than some OEM systems we’ve been flustered by this year.
Does it handle? Well, the steering is sharp and agile, and you can point it into corners confidently. But carrying too much speed – or decelerating late into a bend – can begin to unsettle it. Those independent motors allow smart torque vectoring across the chassis, but on the floaty air springs of this example (named ‘Rica’), ultimate cornering control is left wanting.
There are those coilovers available, of course, which should tie it down more. But how much you really need to hustle a near-three-ton Defender is probably the more pertinent question. On air suspension, it’s a lovely thing to float quietly around in, only the sound of its knobbly all-terrain tyres and the inevitable wind noise at higher cruising speeds to disrupt the calm. Very odd words to type about a classic Landie.
The trade-off for the gargantuan weight of its 200kWh battery is the 375 miles of range it frees up. The engineers considered a lower battery capacity, and future Panterras using a Defender 90 chassis will simply have to cut the kilowatt-hours for packaging reasons. But while range continues to dominate the EV conversation, they wanted a stat the car’s affluent owners wouldn’t feel embarrassed to divulge. The Panterra demands another €100,000 over an LS3, I must add, placing its entry point a long way past £400k.
Folks at The Landrovers are all too aware that projects like this attract online hate – they’ve read plenty of it written about their own work – but they make the anticipated claims of only refreshing tired and scruffy old Defender shells. And the day-to-day usability is so improved, the car’s urban manners now so slick, this feels a genuinely interesting and viable thing to do with a forlorn old Landie. They’ve beaten Land Rover’s own EV programme to production, too, don’t forget. The Panterra project is also ‘just’ the showpiece for something far greater.
“We have some big ideas and a new investor coming in that basically takes our platform, which currently wears a Defender jacket, into a whole new vehicle programme,” says Frank, whose T2 never did get electrified. “For us, this is a huge, huge thing and everybody's crazy excited. The journey here was very, very steep, but now the future looks bright.” Amsterdam’s unlikely carmaking hub might just be about to crank up a notch.
SPECIFICATION | THE LANDROVERS PANTHERRA
Battery: 200kWh, 150kW max charging
Transmission: Quad in-wheel motors, four-wheel drive
Power (hp): 600
Torque (lb ft): 4,720
0-62mph: 5.5 seconds
Top speed: 112mph (limited)
Weight: 2,900kg
Range: 375 miles
Price: £425,000+
Image credit: The Landrovers
Part of the charm of the original Defender was its honest, truck like, substance over design, do anything approach.
This iteration with its teak-deck interior and vastly reduced ground clearance really moves away from that classic Defender ethos.
It is a good demonstration of the Company's design and manufacturing capabilities though.
I “get” a restomod Landy, in fact I’m probably going to restore/rebuild a series 3 from ground up at some point. It’ll have a burbly rover v8 and a soft top.
I “get” cash-rich, time-poor people just going to Twisted or Mahker or whoever and giving them £200k for a lovely V8 Defender that’s properly engineered and rust proof.
I do not “get” spending £400k on an independent suspension EV that looks like a Defender. Nope, just utterly beyond me who would want it.
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