CR wrote:

what is a "Rocket Surgeon" ?

It's a guy that does rocket surgery...

As opposed to a brain scientist.
C'mon, everybody knows this.

tyrannosauROSS wrote:

Just my two pence...

I did a Land Rover off road day in October/November last year.

The guy who was my instructor turned out to be one of Land Rovers top drivers. He was a chap in his late 60's and was off to Barbados a few weeks after I met him to do the press launch for the new Jaguar Range Rover thingy! He was very modest and was one of the guys Land Rover used to send to do the Camel Trophy support.

We got chatting and he said that he had seen the new Defender... and driven it.
Three of them, Land Rover drivers, had taken the final design from one part of the factory to the other under a gazebo type thing to have it signed off by the board and to get their feedback on what they thought.

He said it looked great. Very different to what we now call a Defender, but he said he was impressed.
He said it was no longer a spanner in a field jobby, it had the latest electronics on it and was generally what we would consider a modern car. But he said he was impressed.

Im hopeful... Land Rover are not stupid, I believe you will be able to buy a basic model with no bells and whistles. But I also think that Special Vehicles will also start to sell +£60,000 Defenders like some of the third parties currently do. It would be silly if they didn't... they currently do with other models so why not with a modern Defender.
They will offer the Defender in multiple body types and styles otherwise it will no longer be a Defender and with modern production techniques this will be easier than before.
It will be their most capable off road vehicle to date, at the moment arguably a Range Rover is more capable than a Defender, particularly at a river crossing!!!
If you look at the things Bowler are doing with their new vehicle, and yes i know it only has Defender panels on it because they are easy to work with, cheap and simple in construction, but I believe we could see something similar coming out of the LR factory. Obviously less aggressive and race focused, but given the tight relationship that Bowler has with Land Rover, you cannot tell me that Land Rover are unaware of what those boys are creating... it wouldn't surprise me if a lot of JLR R&D happens at Bowler or Bowlers R&D is partially funded by JLR.

Anyway... my prediction is we will see the new Defender at one of the BIG European motor shows end of this year/ beginning of 2017. And see production at the end of 2018.

Fingers crossed!

This is great to hear! Thanks for sharing that! Sounds exactly what I was preaching on about in my first post. I'd be very excited to see it come out in the time frame you mentioned. That's about the time I'm wanting to get a new vehicle. Only thing is, being an 'Merican and all, I'd love to have a V8. Not a total deal breaker, if the Defender is all I hope, but I may have to see if Special Vehicles will provide us with a SC 5.0 V8. If I think it's really worth the price of admission, I'd pay it.
And I sure hope they bring a truck version to the US. Is that all too much to ask?

GRRR...lots of wait and see I guess.

blackwolf wrote:

I have to say that I think davew has it right, I really doubt that there will be a replacement Defender ever.

There may be a vehicle called a Defender, but if there is it will be so far removed from the last Defender that it won't be the same at all.

I am not really convinced that there is a market for a vehicle that is what the Defender was any more, because the Defender - or rather the original Land-Rover - was intended to be a vehicle that could do pretty well anything that a vehicle could do at the time. With the huge change in vehicle useage, this is no longer possible for any vehicle. The specialist vehicles have become more specialised, and the generic vehicles more generic, and it is no longer possible to marry the two together.

To be a serious contender in a specialised market the vehicle will be highly purposed and built in very small numbers, and I doubt that a 'platform' aimed at the mass-production generic market could do this. In the future, the people who need a rugged vehcile, whether it is for a cherry picker or a trans-Darien expedition, will probably have to use something like a Unimog.

If there is a replacement Defender it will probably look the same as the bland and boring current Discovery (which is turn looks so like every other SUV that I don't even notice them) but with a bit of Rambo-esque plastic bling to make it stand out on the school run.

Of course I may be completely wrong, and a wonderful new Defender may be launched next week, after all that what the friend of my granny's cousin, who used to work with a bloke from a North American JLR dealer who was consulted about this back in 1974, said!

We have a Disco Sport and it looks nothing like every other SUV. It's breaks necks on the daily. Now the F-Pace....that looks like every other SUV in its class. I think they all conspired to make the same vehicle...LOL! I think the new "big" Disco will look great as well and work in the market its intended for.

However, I think you're right about the new Defender. Purists will probably not like it, probably even hate it. But the world has moved on since original Defender came out. As an admirer of the outgoing Defender, I'm still very excited for a new one and there's going to be plenty more like me.

And to Cupboards remark. I'm not saying a new Defender would be a Wrangler clone. However, it could and probably will naturally compete with them if the new Defender truly is the most capable ever. Since one of the new configurations should be a 90, it's gonna be in the same arena as a two door Wrangler...even the Wrangler Unlimited. Until we see it, we don't know how much of a "working vehicle" which is a wide description, it will be. But sadly, those working days, at least those days on the farm, are long behind it anyway....but we'll see.
But it should have some capability, it has to. If at least one of the models can't tow at least 7K, it's not going to be any use to me.

New days, new markets, new vehicles.

We just don't know right now, but it's still fun to cuss and discuss it.

I kinda like our Disco Sport..

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Admin note: this post has had its images recovered from a money grabbing photo hosting site and reinstated

ericvv wrote:

Mr Happy. Looked carefully at your list there. In almost 8 years and 83.000 Km, I indeed had the half shafts replaced, and the EGR once started making unusual noise, but that went away again....
As to the rest of the list, I do not know what that is all about.
Eric