New Defender will still offer 'utility'

Land Rover boss Phil Popham has confirmed to 4wdNewz that the next Defender will still be a utility vehicle rather than an upmarket lifestyle 4WD as some pundits have been predicting. It will, however, be a much more refined vehicle than the current model. It will probably appear around 2014. Design and engineering teams are now seriously working on the replacement.“We have to replace an icon and our designers and engineers have a big task on their hands," Mr Popham said. “Both the press and customers worldwide will be looking very closely at what we do.” He said that a company policy is to build more vehicles on fewer platforms, suggesting that the Defender might be built on, say, a version of the Discovery’s. “That’s certainly one of the options open to us,” he said. Land Rover presently sells fewer than 20,000 Defenders a year.