New Land Rover Defender on a first UK drive on and off-road

Smooth as silk, hard as nails and as tough as old boots. 

I’m talking about the new 21st century Land Rover Defender which I’ve just had a chance to put thoroughly through its paces on and off road in this country as it finally hits the highway. 

Priced from £45,560 for the 110 model, it’s quite a revelation – even if it’s a total different proposition to the original Defender.

Traditionalists with a soft spot for the 72-year-old icon may moan that it’s not the back to basics 4X4 that has captured hearts since 1948, that it costs 100 times more and it’s built in Slovakia. But life moves on.

Given its go anywhere heritage, Land Rover has pushed the boat out to show just how the new Defender will appeal to that small hard core of explorers and adventurers setting off on expeditions to remote corners of the Earth where it will cope with the most extreme of terrains. 

Billed as ‘the most capable Land Rover ever built’, scores of them have been trundling around for weeks the wild deserts and rocks of remote Namibia in South West Africa. That’s always been the stock in trade of the Defender – which was the original Land Rover.

Let’s be honest, most of the people buying the new Defender will not be traversing remote deserts or the Arctic tundra.

In the UK it’s the ‘Country Casuals’ customer base who will use them mainly on the road and occasionally off road, though those out in rural Britain, on farms, remoter parts of Northumbria, the Scottish Highlands, Dartmoor, and Brecon Beacons in Wales will want that extra bit of four-wheel drive capability to get them out of trouble. 

Then there’s the urban jungle of the school run, sports clubs and shopping trips – when life eventually returns to normal.

But it’s good to know that if you need the capability, it’s really there.

I spent a day driving the new Defender from Jaguar Land Rover’s Gaydon design centre in Warwickshire, cross-country through the Cotswolds, to the challenging off-road Land Rover Experience centre at Eastnor near Ledbury and the Malvern Hills in Worcestershire.

I was in the larger five-door family-friendly Defender 110. 

I’d barely gone a few hundred yards and I could tell instinctively that this was a winner. 

It’s a surprisingly smooth operator on tarmac road, regardless of potholes. 

It has a high and commanding seating position with exceptionally comfortable seats, a smart but functional interior, plenty of grab-handles. 

The exterior and interior styling gives an honourable nod to the original Defender, without being a slave to it. 

It has very flexible seating as either a seven-seater like mine (with two extra rear pop-up seats), a six-seater with an extra third central jump seat at the front, or five seater.

On main roads it’s an exceptionally comfortable drive. Hit country lanes and it fare roars along. 

There’s none of that boaty swaying or bouncing around. It’s a good solid drive. 

Push the automatic gear-box into ‘sport’ mode and the sinews tightens up to almost sports like performance. 

On motorways it munches up the miles with good acceleration and long-legged cruising credentials.

But get it off road and it really comes into its own. 

Heading off into the Eastnor Estate around the castle of the same name, I chose the required off-road settings from the dashboard and restricted the speed before tacking the extensive hillside assault course through woodland trees, exposed roots, and deeply sunken, tightly-packed, and steeply angled terrain.

I scrambled through muddy single tracks, up and down some seriously steep and slippery inclines, and waded carefully through opaque brown silted water. 

I’ve done a lot of off-roading and this was not an easy-peasy grass-and-gravel trip. The Defender really does the business. It does what you expect a Defender to do. Sorts it. I felt fully confident. Not once did I feel it wouldn’t cope.

The vehicle’s terrain response system adapts automatically to ruts, mud, sand, rock or snow – and you can set it manually as I did.

The highly capable 4X4 is also packed with modern hi-tech features. 

The X-ray vision using exterior cameras to see what’s out of sight under the vehicle, proved when the bonnet blocked my view to the rough, rugged and deep ruts beneath. I’m still a bit old-school and like to pop my head over for myself. But there’s no disguising this was a great help.

Muddy off-road obstacle courses aside, it will also traverse deserts, mountains, crawl over rocky terrain, and arctic ice. 

It can wade through rivers and streams to a depth of up to 900mm aided by the first electronic wade programme. It underwent 62,000 tests over 744,000 miles in some of the world’s harshest climates. Ground clearance of up to 291mm means it can tackle steep angles easier – downhill and uphill.

The digital rear mirror, which uses cameras and a screen in place of glass, helped me see through and behind the big spare wheel on the back door to give greater rear visibility.

Both the new five-door Defender 110 and smaller three-door 90 variant have four engine variants at launch – two petrol and two diesel. 

Examples of the 90 are the cheapest, starting from £40,290 for the most basic trim and engine combo. 

The 110 range kicks off from £45,560 for the base D200 model with a 2.0-litre four-cylinder diesel motor, 200-horsepower twin-turbocharged diesel engine, which accelerates from rest to 60mph in 9.9 seconds and up to a top speed of 109mph. 

I drove the more powerful D240 with a 240-horsepower version of the 2.0-litre diesel engine that’s over a second quicker to 60mph and boosts the top speed by another 8mph.

It also offers fuel economy of up to 31.7mpg and CO2 emissions of 236g/km on the new WLTP real world measure.

Its price starts from £51,750, or £58,860 in ‘First Edition’ trim.

A plug-in hybrid (PHEV) version is to follow next year, allowing the vehicle to run for periods in silent electric-only mode. 

Prices soar to a whopping £78,800 for the top-of the range Defender X.

A smart commercial or ‘van’ version of the new Defender for businesses and rescue organisations like the Red Cross or Mountain Rescue service is to follow priced from £35,000 plus VAT.

Although the new incarnation of the British icon has been designed and engineered in the UK , the new Defender will be built abroad – at Jaguar Land Rover’s massive new factory at Nitra in Slovakia.

Die-hard critics complain the new Defender is too expensive and not sufficiently ‘basic’. 

Truth is, the previous ageing Defender had to end production in 2016 because it was too expensive to almost hand-build, couldn’t keep up with ever-tougher safety and emissions legislation, and – while worshipped by enthusiasts – was selling far too few to the wider market to make it an economically viable manufacturing proposition.

But as well as being practical for life in the modern world, the new Defender has many styling and practical cues which hark right back to the original, as well as the must-have off-road capability. It’s fun without the flaws. 

The new Defender has been used by the baddies in the movie ‘No Time to Die‘ starring Daniel Craig as British secret agent 007 whose screen has been postponed from April until November because of the coronavirus.

But if there’s one problem for Land Rover it’s that the Defender may take more sales from its existing Discovery, priced from £47,745, than is comfortable. 

Yes, the Disco has a more premium interior and a full seven seat option, rather than two occasional seats.

One lovely touch while out on the road, however. Drivers of the original generation Defender heading my way, including some well-used, mud encrusted farming work-horses, gave a friendly wave – you could almost call it a salute – of recognition and acknowledgement. So the signs are that it will be accepted.

And in these uncertain times, it’s worth pointing out that Land Rover – and particular the Defender – has a long association with the Red Cross following years of humanitarian work in some of the world’s most inaccessible spots. Given the current climate, that’s at least one extra bit of comfort.