When I became an autojournalist, I technically didn’t own a car. My girlfriend had an automatic Honda Civic that I could borrow, which scarcely counts. This wasn’t due to a lack of interest. That yearning to own as many stupid cars as possible never goes away. It’s just that I lived in Chicago and had easier access to public transit than to the money required to park a car in the city, let alone insure one.
Not owning a car also fit quite well with my lifestyle. Chicago in your early 20s is no place for a teetotaller. Trying to be sober in Chicago, I assume, is like going gluten-free in Naples — I have to assume because I never even tried. Being able to drink in the Second City’s countless great watering holes was a treat, and not having to worry about driving removed one obvious downside.
To be honest, I didn’t need to travel far to drink. Bars are everywhere. The State of Illinois famously outlawed happy hours before I moved there, probably because they were getting sick of commodities traders driving their BMWs into Lake Michigan. Instead of happy hours, we had happy days, which is why my friend Habeab and I spent more hours than I’m capable of remembering drinking at the local U of M bar down the street. The best deal included $1 Coors Lights and half-priced appetizers from open to close, so I could get a full meal and pack away a sixer for less than $20 with a healthy tip. Because Habeab worked the night shift, most of our drinking was timed to the middle of the day so he could sober up enough before work.
The other appeal of this, as a Texan, was the extreme novelty. I grew up in a place where many people drove to their mailboxes. A car was a necessity, and my affection for cars aside, I soon realized the necessity part didn’t stoke that particular fire inside of me. In college, I studied Geography, became enamored with the idea of New Urbanism, and wrote a thesis on the possibilities of transit-oriented development in Central Texas. Living in Chicago showed me what life without needing a car was like.
Upon moving back to Houston, I selected an apartment near the city’s single light rail line, which conveniently connected me to the city’s best attractions (restaurants, baseball, museums, theater, opera/ballet) without needing a car. I also immediately bought a Volvo 240 wagon because needing a car and wanting a car are two different things. Also, I had free parking. My budding urbanism, as always, collided with my other passion.
The curse of self-awareness is realizing how many contradictions are hardwired into existence. I want to personally have 9,000 cars and, at the same time, I want other people to have fewer cars. I want to live in a place where I can get around without the need for a car, but I also want it to be car-friendly. I believe in anthropogenic climate change and think most people should drive electric cars, but I also believe in the curative power of a big, nasty V8.
Over the years, I’ve come to a sort of internal detente so that I’m able to wake up in the morning and function at my job. I live in a building that’s adjacent to a small downtown, which gives me access, on foot, to concerts and restaurants and shopping and all the stuff I value (while there are many close bars, the proximity of a library is a bit more valuable as a parent). Even better, I can walk to a train that connects me with the heart of Manhattan in under an hour.
Do I have cars? Yes, but I have to pay a price to keep them. The family car (a CR-V Hybrid) and the fun car (my E39) both park in spots with a monthly fee attached to them. I try to limit driving for necessity and, instead, reserve that driving time for fun driving. That’s the goal, at least. While my BMW isn’t exactly a Prius, my average fuel economy is quite high.
There is balance. Or, there was balance, until the 2025 Defender 130 V8 showed up.
The Basics
Engine: 5.0-liter supercharged V8
Transmission: Eight-speed automatic transmission
Drive: All-wheel-drive with twin-speed transfer box
Output: 493 horsepower, 450 lb-ft of torque
Fuel Economy: 14 MPG City, 19 MPG Highway, 16 Combined
Body style: Three-row SUV
Base price: $118,900
Price as-tested: $130,418 including $1,625 Freight Charge
This Is All The Car You Could Ever Want
I have driven a vintage Land Rover Defender, and I think I get it. Not only does it look like it should come with a dukedom, but there’s a personality there that defies all of its many shortcomings. It is not fast. It is not efficient. It’s loud in a not-fun way. Even the best of them can be chores on the road over long distances. There are aftermarket companies that can address some of these issues, but the only way to address all of them is to buy one of these.
The new Defender is a huge departure from the old one in that it does basically everything well. Especially in V8 trim, it is fast. It is relatively efficient for its size, especially compared to the last Defender we got here. It’s loud in the best way and can carry you, your friends, and your rugby gear in supreme comfort for endless miles. It is good in all the ways the OG Defender is not. In fact, someone got so mad about the new Defender being this good that he started his own company to build his own, more faithful version.
Going back to my own internal struggles, I have no qualms with someone owning this car, but I like to think of myself as a person who wouldn’t want one unless I was regularly driving to a house in the mountains or engaging in some sort of outdoorsy sport that required all the capability. The streets in my neighborhood may be bad, but they’re not that bad.
This is a car for lords, ladies, and the Real Housewives of Versailles.
My problem is … I do want this car.
My Soul Is Colored Carpathian
I don’t even mean the idea of a Land Rover Defender in abstract. Thomas drove the shorter 110 version of this car in white and, while it looked fine, I didn’t get that excited about it. The gold standard three-row gas-powered SUV has long been the Alpina XB7 to me, and it was a great relief to me that my appreciation for those has never crossed over into true desire.
This specific size and spec is the car I’d never think to ask for, which is perhaps why my guard was way down. A matte black, autocratic British Suburban? As if.
It’s not even just matte black. It’s the “Carpathian Exterior Pack,” which includes Carpathian Grey paint wrapped with satin protective film, black hood and tail door, and Ebony Windsor leather. This is not a car for me, this is a car for Carpathia’s most famous resident: Dracula.
Aw, crap. Why do I like this thing? I prefer a car with a manual transmission. I’m looking forward to driving our CrossCabriolet through the desert, knowing that the top will probably never go up again. I’ve spent plenty of time online shopping for Kei cars and 2CVs and Renault 4s and exactly zero minutes looking at new-ish British SUVs (I’d mess with a convertible Freelander, though).
Was it the door? I do love that the rear door swings wide instead of up like your traditional SUV. That can’t be it, though. Was it the capability? Not really! I’d love to say I took it on some sort of off-road adventure and, while I did take it hiking, I drove across roads I could have easily conquered in a bagged Honda Insight.
I just used it like a car. I took my kid to play dates. I went to play Ultimate in the rain. I picked up my parents and took the family on a picnic. I just did regular car things. It’s good at car things. The visibility, other than slightly out the rear because of the tire, is surprisingly good. But you know what else is good at car things? A Toyota Corolla Cross Hybrid, and that’s about a fifth the price of this thing.
Is the sound? Maybe. That’s certainly part of the appeal. This V8 sounds great in everything, from the F-Type to the Bowler Nemesis. You could put a wig on it, give it a guitar, and shove it behind Mick Jagger, and it would probably blow Keith Richards off the stage. And like most of the characters on Bridgerton, it’s faster than it pretends to be.
But I drive fast and luxurious cars all the time. I enjoy telling people that I’m not impressed by them, that a good, cheap car is way more of an accomplishment than a great expensive one. Any car you spend more than $100,000 on better be great, and the reality is many of them are just good.
Is this even great? I’m struggling to come up with one thing it does so much better than anything else that I would call it great. I do like where the gear shift lever is placed. That’s something. I do like the shiny black bits on the outside. Contrast is cool.
I’ve Never Been Happier To Not Have $130,000 To Spend On A Car
My grand bargain is busted. I can barely even look at myself in the mirror.
Perhaps my insistence that I have the self-control to live a humble, semi-efficient life is all a lie. Maybe I merely lack the means to indulge my deepest desires, and I’ve constructed an entire self-image around choosing to deny myself these pleasures so I don’t feel bad about not being able to access them. Or, worse, for being able to access them but not truly possess them. If I make it my choice, then I have some control.
Could it be that simple? Are all ethics just a mental white noise designed to tune out the uncomfortable dissonance of life?
Or maybe it’s just comfortable and nice. Maybe I just like certain things and, while I didn’t expect giganto Bram Stoker-spec supercharged SUVs to be one of those things, it just is. If everyone had identical preferences, we’d all drive the same car, eat the same food, and wear the same clothes.
That would be extraordinarily efficient, but it wouldn’t be very fun. The Defender 130 is not extraordinarily efficient, either, but driving it is very fun to me, which I guess is all that matters.
Just don’t loan me $130,000, no matter how much I ask.
Top graphic photo: Matt Hardigree
Unreadable rubbish. You wore me out 1/2 way through.
Did we read the same article? I would argue this was a far more relevant and relatable review than the sterile, spec-filled love letter you’d see elsewhere. To each his or her own but this piece is objectively not rubbish.
I too want to not like it, and yet the styling has grown on me. It’s not brutalist like the Jag and Bentley concepts. It’s a forward thinking style with hints to the past but done right. It’s one of those examples of good design that you might not like at first, but then come to realize that it is rather nice after it digests for a while.
It is a very nice looking ride. I for one, forgive you for liking it.
In my area, the people that have these often drive like total assholes.
In my area, Nissan Altima and Tesla 3 drivers would like a word with you…..I’m purdy sure neither vehicle comes with turn signals. At least the Nissan has a grill. When my ass is getting buttfucked at 80mph on I30 it’s nice to see the face of my buttfucker on the highway. Telsa’s have no face. Guess the Nissan is my new baby’s daddy
If this a car for Dracula, what does the Autopian’s in house goth think? Or are you and Adrian not on speaking terms after you inflicted a Ssangyong Rodius on him.
I can’t really wrap my head around the valuof this thing, perhaps because luxury and SUV don’t quite mesh. I’m outdoorsy enough to sort of justify this, if my humble Mazda CX-5 hadn’t been so good at getting to ski trail MTB trails and the Cascade Lakes. It was so good that if I had the money I would own a Mazda Bongo Friendee before a Landrover.
IIRC, Adrian helped design this thing.
I did indeed. It was one of the cars I had responsibility for.
Love that Alfa in the last photo! But I also have to confess a dark secret, that of rather enjoying a rental Suburban (in the off roady trim, can’t even remember what it’s called) on a family trip to Colorado last summer. I get the feelings Matt. But hey at the end of the day you’re still rocking that cool old BMW and a very good practical family car. All is well.
I felt much the same way after spending over a month driving my parents spare car, a 2021 Mercedes E450. It’s not a top of the line model or anything. But I’m used to driving my lowered, manual transmission 2014 Sportwagen TDI. It’s pretty basic by modern car standards, it’s kinda loud, and sounds a bit like agricultural equipment. And I adore it. But I had to have the instrument cluster sent out for a fix early this year, so I got the Benz.
There wasn’t one particular thing I loved about it. But it was quiet, comfortable, and just so easy to live with. The AWD made driving in the snow a breeze. The mild hybrid system meant that the auto stop/start was almost imperceptible. It has a sport mode and I never engaged it once, just because it never felt necessary. I’ve driven a ton of cars, but there was something about that Benz that resonated with me. I love my Sportwagen, but I was almost sad to give the keys back.
Owning a car is as American as Apple Pie. A cliche, obviously, but for good measure: it’s a symbol of freedom, of not being tied down; at a drop of a dime, you can leave everything behind and just … DRIVE. It’s freedom for your soul.
What we don’t need are $100k+, 4-ton juggernauts to achieve this. Give us tiny three-wheeled electric micro-mobile and efficient vehicles that can be driven on our roads and we can still enjoy this American tenet.
> Living in Chicago showed me what life without needing a car was like.
So few Americans really get a chance to experience this – it’s why proper urbanism is such a hard sell in the states. It becomes especially clear when you visit a city like Barcelona or Bern, where the public transit actually works, and you see the cafe culture and the parks.
I love my car, but I love it because I was able to get something deeply impractical, because I do not Need my car. My car is for dropping the top and ripping through a windy wooded road out to spend the day on the coast, and it’s beautiful for that. Likewise, I have friends with burly Jeeps and trucks, and we genuinely enjoy driving out to the middle of goddamn nowhere over whatever happens to be in our way – a totally different vehicle type than mine, but the same passion. I also have friends with farms and livestock, and their trucks, tractors and vehicles are tools – they’re the right tool for the job and they make my friends’ lives easier.
I don’t think the problem with cars is car enthusiasts – I think the problem with cars is that we need them for things we should not need them for. The enthusiast with the V8 ripping around the track on the weekend isn’t the reason we’ve got global warming, it’s the fact that every single person in America hops in their car every day to drive 30mi to work and the store, where all the goods are delivered by a fleet of diesel trucks. Freedom isn’t having a car, it’s not having to find parking or figure out how you’re gonna get home from the bar.
Which is a long way to say: stop feeling bad about desiring a desirable object! There’s room in the world for both 15 minute cities and British Villian-mobiles! (I do actually like the new Defender, especially in black. If I ever have a squad of mercenary goons, they’re riding in a Defender.)
Depending on which U of M bar Matt was talking about I may live on that block. To be honest, if I wasn’t a car enthusiast and didn’t love both my cars so much I think I’d rather not have one. I only use them on trips to places over an hour away, which I’ve had very few of this year needing to take a pause from Lemons, and to be honest, the last two times I drove car A was in June around the block to wash it, and in April to buy a new battery for car B. Normally I’d rather just walk to the store for just a handful of things, but batteries are heavy. Installed it but never hooked it up as I haven’t driven car B yet this year.
edit, total miles driven since April: 1.1 miles.
I lived in San Francisco for 20 years, 14 of them without a car.
Not paying for parking, payments, insurance, registration, taxes, fuel & maintenance was like giving myself a massive raise.
And you learn fast why there are very few overweight San Franciscans.
For some reason, I deeply connected with that story and have had many of the same thoughts recently about some of the more illogical and higher priced vehicle choices of my neighbors. I keep telling myself I should not like an Ineos Grenadier. I traditionally have not even liked SUVs as a class of vehicle. It is expensive, impractical, and inefficient. And it doesn’t really do any one thing really well (except ape a LR/G-class?). But the internal debate dialog is stronger than I expected.
(Very well written, Matt.)
The Grenadier is great because it’s so impractical – they didn’t try to make a mass-market vehicle, they made a vehicle fit to one purpose and pushed that as far as it could go. I’m not the target market either, but damn do I respect it.
Hey, the good news is that a 2 year old one with 10k miles will be work $70k, maybe less!
The bad news is that it’s got 2 fewer years of warranty.
I think the 90 and the 110 wear better proportions. The 130 just looks off, mostly because the wheelbase is the same as the 110. So when you look at one, it’s a lot of rear overhang, which still hinders off-road capability just like an extended wheelbase would.
I agree. Its carrying a lot of weight at the rear.
Those looking for that all important 3rd row are not worried about approach/departure angles. As long as it doesn’t scrape the driveway at the local montessori school it’s doing it’s job.
The aspiration is strong with this one…
“This is a car for lords, ladies, and the Real Housewives of Versailles.”
Nah, its just a Infiniti QX for contrarians.
This is Vigo the Carpathian erasure
Why am I drippings with goo?
Imagine my surprise to learn that 90, 110, and 130 are not the wheelbases of these vehicles.
For how big this is described, it’s only the size of a Tahoe.
To be fair, Tahoe’s are pretty big.
That depends greatly on your perspective I suppose.
Oh absolutely. My brain is stuck in the 90s, my K2500 is smaller in most dimensions (except length) than a modern Tahoe.
In what universe is a Tahoe not big?
Mine? I drive a truck 4+ feet longer than a Tahoe.
Most full sized trucks are longer, all LWB domestic SUVs are longer, etc
That’s like saying a millionaire isn’t wealthy because billionaires exist.
My pickup is longer than a Tahoe, but I hauls stuff more than people.
In the land of Suburbans and Excursions
I know they used to be, but then again, BMW now has a 2.0L 330, a 3.0L 340, and (most egregiously?) AMG has a 2.0L (!!) C63.
Numbers don’t matter anymore (shrug)
The new X3 M50 (they’ve dropped the “i”) is the 3.0-liter I6, but “M50i” used to be their designation for the V8, and even then it wasn’t quite right, because those have been 4.4-liter units.
BMW numbers haven’t made sense for a long time. It goes at least all the way back to the turbocharged E23 745i, which was a 3.2-liter I6. BMW’s reasoning then was that FIA equivalency factor standards considered a turbocharged 3.2-liter engine to be about as powerful as a 4.5-liter N/A one. I’m not sure what their reasoning is now.
A lot of the falsification of numbers hasn’t been just driven by forced induction and hybridization, but also by the marketing aspect. Marketers don’t want a new version of a car to have a smaller number than the old one due to shrunken displacement, even if the new one is more powerful and more efficient. So they bump the number up. In fact, one of the only times I can think about where an automaker was genuinely honest on the badge about a smaller number was when the Lexus GX was redesigned, and went from a GX 470 badge to a GX 460 one (never mind that the new one is a GX 550 using a 3.4-liter twin-turbo V6, and soon a GX 550h using a 2.4-liter turbo-hybrid I4)
Thank goodness that schools out, otherwise some kid would be saying that to their math teacher.
LOL it costs like 130k a year to keep running 😛
The JLR supercharged 5.0-liter is a thing of beauty, both aurally and experientially.
I had a Range Rover Sport with that beastie and it was intoxicating on a number of different levels, so I definitely won’t hold Matt’s reluctant attraction against him. 🙂
The Jaguar AJ-V8 has an interesting history. Technically, the gen. 1 began development before Ford officially took over the company, with the goal of replacing Jaguar’s then-customary I6 and V12 units. But it didn’t arrive until the late nineties, making its debut in the X100 XK8. As Jaguar was under FoMoCo, the engine was built at Ford’s Bridgend, Wales plant, in the UK. It has some Ford philosophy in terms of how it was constructed, but has never shared an architecture with any “Ford” engine, such as the Mod series and the latest Coyote.
The gen. 1 AJ-V8 was principally sold in 4.0-liter or 4.0-liter supercharged spec. There was also a 3.2-liter version not sold here, and a 3.9-liter offshoot built in Lima, OH for the Ford Thunderbird and Lincoln LS. It had some timing chain issues, along with Nikasil/low-compression problems due to our high-sulfur fuel in the US at the time.
The gen. 2 arrived in the early 2000s, and was mainly in 4.2-liter, 4.2-liter supercharged and (for Land Rover) 4.4-liter applications. And there was a 3.5-liter version sold overseas. And the Aston Martin 4.3-liter and 4.7-liter V8 engines were based on the gen. 2 architecture, albeit heavily modified and built elsewhere. The gen. 2 is definitely the most bulletproof of the AJ series, as there’s just not a lot that goes wrong on it. I’ve had it in a few different cars (2004 XJ Vanden Plas, 2006 XJ Vanden Plas, 2006 Range Rover Supercharged), and it was never an issue. Other stuff was, but not the engine.
And that brings us to today’s gen. 3 engine, which arrived after Ford had married together Jaguar and Land Rover and sold them as a pair to Tata Motors. That said, it was still built at Ford’s Bridgend plant under contract for JLR. The gen. 3 came in 5.0-liter and 5.0-liter supercharged specifications. Shortly after debut, the 5.0-liter N/A engine went away and was replaced by a 3.0-liter supercharged V6, achieved by using the same outer block casting as the V8, but removing two cylinders and using shorter heads. I’ve had this engine family in three cars as well (2010 Range Rover Supercharged, 2015 LR4 HSE Lux, 2020 Range Rover Autobiography LWB). The first two were problematic; we’ll see about the last one, since I just bought it. But it’s warrantied to 148K miles.
The gen. 3 has had some pretty glaring issues. The earliest ones produced in 2009 and early 2010 actually had superior Tsubaki timing chains, but later ones switched to INA chains that were known for stretching, jumping time and ruining the engine…especially when JLR decided to start recommending 12,000 miles or more between oil changes, which would let the tensioners gum up. There are updated guides and chains, I believe. Another expensive issue is the coolant crossover pipes, which are two halves of plastic welded together and which eventually haze and crack. There is an updated one-piece plastic design available that backdates to all of the cars, and JLR even (though they waited until 2024 to do so) began using aluminum pipes.
The V6 went away sometime after 2019, in place of JLR’s in-house Ingenium I6 MHEV engine. Meanwhile, Ford continued to build the V8 engines under contract for JLR through 2020, after which JLR bought all the tooling and set up its own line to continue manufacturing it. My understanding was that it was going away in favor of a BMW twin-turbo V8 (originally the N63, now the S68 MHEV setup). So I was surprised to see it’s still available as of 2025, simultaneously with the new Defender OCTA that uses the BMW twin-turbo.
Can’t spell ‘geek’ without G.K.! 😀
And I mean that in the most positive manner. I was familiar with the progression from 4.0-4.4-5.0 and knew little things like (IIRC) the 3.5s were carbureted, but this is nicely comprehensive and – dare I say it – good Autopian… ing. Thanks!
LR hit it out of the park with the new defender. I love the fact it can be had in a two door, four cylinder, or a 3-row V8. Something for everyone to like.