Land Rover Off Road 4×4 Driving

According to rumour (well we wouldn’t let the lack of any hard facts stop us commenting!) the Defender only has until about 2010 before it becomes obsolete.

So what will be the replacement?

At the moment, the defender is still going strong, but with it’s tin can atop a couple of girders construction, it simply won’t be able to keep up with modern safety requirements. If you roll one it simply squishes, crumple zones are designed into the thing you hit and side impact protection is limited to the mobile phone you have in your trouser pocket. The fact is that for all of it’s amazing ability, it really isn’t a 21st century vehicle.

The Discovery 3 is pretty impressive, but the fact is that with all of the technology it is too expensive for real off-road drivers to throw off cliffs on a daily basis. This means that all of the companies who used to use Land Rovers to do their work are now looking at to Toyota or Mitsubishi for their workhorse.

With most of the pick-ups on the market having drum brakes at the back, there’s still nothing like a Landy for driving through a couple of feet of water. Clearances on most of the competition are still not a patch on the Defender and Land Rover themselves have yet to suggest what they are going to do.

Surely it isn’t beyond modern technology to build a simple 4×4 which can be worked hard, be reasonably efficient and not cost the earth?

The classic Defender is still a flagship for Land Rover, so how will they cope when they become just another luxury SUV manufacturer in a world where fuel and insurance prices are increasing by the month?

Any new owner of the Land Rover brand will need to ensure that at the core of their business is the real deal - the off-road vehicle that can cope with every eventuality, or be modified simply to do so.

It needs clearance - the 90 has amazing clearance - still unrivalled by any other vehicle in the world.

It needs to be simple and intuitive - 2 gear boxes and a big lever that locks a centre diff, there’s no reason to change this.

It needs disk brakes all round to cope with dragging wheels through mud, sludge and silt laden water.

It needs to be available in single cab, double cab and station wagon bodies.

For the sake of safety, lets have ABS - and make sure it works down to 1mph.

If you feel you need to - put traction control on it, but let us switch it off when we need to.

Please - build us a 4×4 that we can use.

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Mmmmmmm, new landy……..(drools!)

This really does look like a nice beast - the guys have decided not to muck about with the legendary capabilities of the Defender, so the Ladder chassis and classic styling stays. Under the bonnet however is a new 2.4l common rail diesel, (the same one that is in the current Ford Transit - a proven workhorse, though how it will react to dubious fuel in the less civilised areas of the world is not yet known) this replaces the TD5.

With 20% more torque, and power across a wider rev range, this looks like a great improvement over the old one, and with 6 gears (lower 1st for slower decents and more power walking uphill, as well as a good starting gear when towing heavy loads, and a cruising 6th for more comfort on road) it looks like the Defender is set to stay at the top of it’s field.

The dashboard (which previously looked like it was nicked out of a late 80’s metro) has been updated, with a new airflow system to hopefully sort those foggy window days. All seats will now be forward facing (definitely safer, and hopefully conforming to Borda and Lantra regs), with the facility to fold them away.

The basics are all there, and once the electrical problems are ironed out this should be an excellent vehicle. The anti-stall and gear ratios in the new beast will just make working with it simpler and easier, reducing stress on the drive-train and driver!

Article by Beyond4×4.

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Well, we’ve had a play in it, and it’s lovely.

On road the engine pulls effortlessly up through the gears and speeds, giving you confidence that now you could actually try to overtake that slow moving mobility scooter with ease. For those of us who thought the TD5 was good, this is another jump in quality again. Unfortunately, there is even less likelihood that you can look after the engine in this one yourself - you’ll have to go back to the 200/300tdi’s before you can muck around with them yourself (and even some of the 300’s came with an electronic brain - so beware).

The gearbox feels good, and the 6 gears do help on road, though it’s not hard to stall if you try to set off a bit sharp in second. Off road however you start to notice a real difference. The low first gear is even better than the low first in the Santana (Land Rover’s estranged Spanish cousin), with slow controlled descents, and so much pulling power that you have to literally stand on the brake pedal to stall it.

The transfer and diff lock lever has moved slightly, though after a minute you don’t notice this, and the action is still the same - intuitive and sensible.

The suspension and shocks have not changed much, and considering that the one we had a play in was brand new it felt very composed over some of the roughest terrain our course could throw at it. Hopefully the shocks and coils will wear well, and it’ll feel just as competant after 5 years of use.

So now for the niggles!

Why in heaven’s name didn’t they lengthen the seat rails for the driver? There’s a good amount of room in the back seats (this isn’t a luxury bus - it’s a Land Rover), so losing a little so that the operator can control the pedals more comfortably would surely help those of us over 6′ tall who have to do a Mr Bean in order to drive them.

They’ve also got rid of the Land Rover signature vents in the front - something which should help with the foggy morning problems, but realistically was part of the joy of a Land Rover - simple solutions to simple problems. Though the new dash looks nice enough (in a slightly flattened way), it feels like a complex solution to something that wasn’t really a problem. Now if your fan packs up you get no airflow, whereas before all you had to do was speed up a little!

Other than that - it’s pretty darn nice. I’m sure that someone could easily adapt the seat rails if needed, and I’m not going to worry too much that the water no longer sloshes through the vents on long deep wades. My only worry is what will happen next - we all know that this is a halfway redesign to comply with EU regs, so what will happen in 2010 - will we still have the simple workhorse the Land Rover was initially designed to be, or will we have a retro styled 4×4 people carrier/van that is the worst of all compromises?

So far the improvements have on balance improved it - we hope it stays like this.

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