It may be a little 'off topic' for a performance car website, but when Land Rover emailed an invitation to try a bit of off-roading at the Eastnor Castle estate, I couldn't really say no.
It didn't matter that a bit of clay shooting and a slap-up lunch were also on the menu, the truth is I've always wanted to visit Eastnor for a bit of mud-plugging. It's a sort of spiritual home for Land Rover, as the company has used the estate for proving its off-road creations for the last half century or so. It still hosts the factory work, but the place is also open to punters who want to go off-road with the Land Rover Experience and enjoy a bit of 'proper country lifestyle' to boot. Which I'm guessing is what was supposed to rub off on us from the clay pigeon element of our media jolly - it's a hard life sometimes, huh?
I'd not driven a Defender since
magazine ran a long term Station Wagon back in the late 1990s. It was one of those 'classic' special editions built to celebrate some anniversary or other, and I can't for the life of me remember which engine it was packing. I loved it though, and pinched it off whoever was supposed to be running it whenever possible.
Externally at least, the latest models haven't changed much from those days, although there is an extra bonnet bump to hide the Ford Transit derived 2.4-litre four cylinder turbodiesel that is now the Defender's single engine option. (Before going to Eastnor I might have written that the Defender hasn't changed much from the 1950s, but Land Rover wheeled out a couple of its historic originals to remind us just how rudimentary those early vehicles were.)
Inside, the Defender remains relatively rudimentary too, but eyeball dash vents and a proper ventilation/aircon system replace the bulkhead flaps of yore. I felt a bit sad about that, oddly, but then given the choice I'd probably ask for a set of those old-fangled wipers you used to be able to wiggle-waggle from inside the cabin - instead of the new-fangled ones that do actually shift mud off the windscreen.
So to the hills! Straight from the castle drive to the muddy tracks of the estate, where the Defender's four-wheel-drive 'high' setting was the order of the day. In spite of the seriously slick and muddy going, our little convoy gamely tackled slithery off-camber slopes, axle-twisting tree roots, water-filled ruts and slippery descents - and all on the road-orientated General Grabber tyres that are fitted as standard with the alloy wheel option.
Off road, the engine installation works a treat. It's not stupendously powerful at 122hp, but it's got plenty of low down grunt - 232lb ft from 2000rpm - so is extremely tractable even at crawl speeds. The clutch action on the latest six-speed box seemed a lot lighter than I remembered of old, and the gear change a lot less baulky, which makes tackling the tricky bits a little less daunting.
We struggled for grip in a few places, to be honest, but our Land Rover Experience mentor wouldn't acknowledge for a moment that we needed a muddier tyre. 'It's all in the mind', he said, or something to that effect. And to be fair we did manage to get our Defender everywhere they pointed us, but it was sometimes harder work than it might have been, and as is often the case off-road we seemed to be testing the limits of the tyres and not those of the vehicle. If I wanted a Defender to tow the PH Caterham Academy race car trailer across a wet grassy paddock (now there's an idea...) the Grabbers would cope, but for anything more taxing off-road I'd consider standing for a little extra road noise to make life easier off-tarmac on more focused rubber.
It wouldn't be too much of a hardship, I suspect, because these latest Defenders are notably more refined than any that have gone before. It's partly due to the direct injection fuel system which dramatically reduces combustion roar, but also to the widely-spaced six-speed gearbox ratios that enable more relaxed cruising and upgraded sound-insulation. That said, we did less than a couple of miles of country lanes on tarmac, so I'd be interested to hear experiences of other PHers who have lived with these Landies on a day-to-day basis.
But what the hell, I'm not sure anyone with a Defender itch that needs scratching really cares much about any of the above, do they? Like I said, I loved the last one I drove back in the 1990s, and this version's the same only better.
(PS. The car we drove was a 110 Double Cab Pick Up with a canvas rear tilt in top XS guise - yours for £27k.)