Who says you are not going to like the new Defender? The guy who designed it, that’s who.
In an interview with Australia’s Motoring, Gerry McGovern, head of design at Land Rover, said that fans of the original Defender won’t “be satisfied” “if they’re expecting to see a facsimile of the old one with all the latest tech”. Instead of “utilitarian” – which fans of the original Defender love – the main goal of the New Defender is to be “relevant”. Yikes.
He further dug himself in deeper without a high-lift jack by saying the new design will “acknowledge the great heritage of Defender in terms of its capability, in terms of its robustness, its durability—but not necessarily its visual quality.”
Why aren’t you going to like the New Defender?
It seems that it is a numbers game. He points out that the original Defender sold only two million vehicles over a period of 68 years compared to the Evoque, which sold over 700,000 in just 6 years. So get ready for a Defender that looks like an Evoque.
The final nail in the coffin came when he said that in producing a vehicle today, Land Rover would not be “preoccupied with what’s gone before”. He wasn’t kidding then when he said that the new design would be “polarizing”. And it doesn’t seem to be in a good way.
One of my contacts who was selling his Defender 90 just got a job at Land Rover in the design department. What did he do when he saw the new Defender? Took his off the market.
So, if you are a fan of the Original Defender, don’t wait until 2019 just to be disappointed, buy an imported Original Land Rover Defender today.