It promises unrivalled off-road performance with on-road niceties. But does it deliver?
The talismanic strategic status of the reimagined Land Rover Defender has been obvious since we first saw one back in 2019. The funny thing is, this car’s commercial significance has rapidly become even greater. JLR sold more Defenders in 2023 than all of its Velars, Evoques and Discovery Sports combined. In the UK, it has sold more and more units every full calendar year since its introduction. So it’s a vital profit generator (given it can easily be dressed up to cost close to £100,000 in just-so specification), and suddenly an asset that the company simply can’t afford to let go off the boil.Hence this 2025-model-year update. It’s not quite a facelift, because very few if any exterior design changes are entailed. It’s more about lifting the Defender’s luxury cabin ambience to meet slightly more bourgeois appetites (still no hose-out interior, then. Gah, etc).But, cabin revisions aside, there's a new engine in the range; with the new range-topping Defender Octa about to launch to the market.The new Defender is available in 90, 110 and extra-long 130 forms, the 90 only emerging into showrooms early in 2021 and the 130 in 2022. The engine range, which was only four options strong at launch, has expanded to encompass six motors in all, although some are only on offer in models with starting prices above £80,000.The meat of that engine range is now comprised of two six-cylinder, 3.0-litre diesel options (D250 & D350) which offer between 247- and 345bhp, as well as a four-cylinder petrol-electric P300e plug-in hybrid (which adds in an electric drive motors to help out that same four-pot petrol turbo engine, and to boost real-world running efficiency and fleet running credentials).If you're shopping at the pricier end of the showroom spectrum, P425 and P500 V8 options are available, both sitting underneath that new 626bhp V8 Octa.The Land Rover Defender line-up at a glanceThe Defender's model grade structure is now simpler than it was. The cheapest S models start at under £60,000, and the line-up extends up from there through X-Dynamic SE and -HSE, X and V8 specifications. Commercial-grade Defender Hard Top models, which come without rear seats and with boosted load-carrying space, are still available also. Lower-grade cars come on fixed-height steel coil suspension as standard, with height-adjustable air suspension optional, and typically packaging with Land Rover's latest Terrain Response offroad traction and stability control aids and adaptive damping.On interior layout, there's lots of flexibility on offer. A pair of manually deployable third-row seats are available as an option on 110 models; a middle-set front-row 'jump seat' is offered on some derivatives (though not, critically, where it would effectively turn the Defender into a nine-seater minibus); and extra cabin configurability has been added to the extra-long 130 version, to which we'll come shortly.
