Updating a distinctive ride is a difficult task. The final Jaguar F-Type facelift still feels a bit like a front end that’s a bit forced, the facelifted Fiat Multipla erased much of the character of the original design, but the mid-cycle updates for the Lexus LC 500 are so subtle, they’re just about perfect. In the vein of treading carefully, Land Rover has given the Defender SUV the lightest of updates, but some of them are rather desirable.
The big story everyone’s blogging about is actually a few months old: a set of 20-inch steel-look aluminum alloy rollers, upsized from the previous 18-inch steel wheels. While we’ve briefly touched on this wheel choice before, seeing as it first appeared last year, it’s worth noting why Land Rover’s gone with it. To start, a larger diameter means these 20-inch steel-look wheels will fit over larger brakes than 18-inch wheels will. Hey, when you’re hauling two-and-a-half tons of SUV down from 60 MPH, you’ll probably want larger discs with more thermal capacity and larger pads clamped by larger calipers to maximize swept area. These 20-inch wheels actually fit around the calipers on six-cylinder P400 models, meaning you’re no longer forced to choose a four-cylinder engine if you want to go full retro.
The second benefit is weight. Last year, Car And Driver had Land Rover weigh both the old 18-inch steel wheels and the new 20-inch steel-look aluminum alloy wheels, and found that the larger alloy hoops save 7.89 pounds per corner, or nearly 40 pounds from a Defender if we’re including the spare tire. More importantly, four of those wheels are unsprung, rotating mass, meaning the new wheels should offer modest ride and handling improvements over the old steelies.
Inside, all Defenders now get the 13.1-inch touchscreen from the Range Rover Sport. While more screen real estate isn’t necessarily an improvement in itself, adding screen real estate without adding clutter to the user interface should make it easier to press the right virtual tile, which should help ease-of-use for the already brilliantly easy-to-navigate infotainment system. At the same time, the shifter’s been moved closer to the driver, and Land Rover’s whipped up a new center console with available removable side pockets and an extra covered cubby for small items.
As far as other changes go, the rest of the roster is relatively minor. A camera-based driver monitoring system adds to the advanced driver assistance suite, adaptive off-road cruise control that lets you set desired comfort and focus on steering should make off-roading even more relaxing, and new lights look familiar yet sharper all at once. In addition, new hood inserts replace the somewhat winga-dinga ridged chequered inserts available on the old model, the main grille spar and badges are now black, and Land Rover’s offering two new colors, including a green that should look proper on a Defender.
While a light round of updates, Land Rover seems to be following the formula of ‘if it already looks great, don’t mess with it too much.’ It’s a solid one, and from the slight increase in screen real estate to the new shade of green, it should make the Defender an even more compelling choice in the luxury SUV arena.
Top graphic credit: Land Rover
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Quite a few of these in my neighborhood, and they look good: nice proportions and detailing (love that cluster of small, square taillights for some reason). Mostly in that nice, non-metallic blue/grey that looks like Ford’s “Area 51” color from the Mavericks, etc… No idea what the recent Discovery is like to drive or own long-term (not great I suspect, given LR’s well-earned rep over the past few decades). Again, I like them, but I’m too risk-averse at this point in my life to actually buy one (and if I were going to buy a high-risk (fixwise) vehicle, it’d be an old Citroen DS rather than anything Land Rover made).
I still think that rectangle of body-colored metal/plastic behind the B pillar is stupid and it’s got to impair rear 3/4 visibility (unless they have a better-than-average collision-avoidance camera/sensor system, which maybe they do given these aren’t exactly cheap).
The shade of metallic green and those wheels look great regardless. 🙂
Oh, and I think the original Multipla needed erasing. It has one of the ugliest front ends I’ve seen in my life. And I am 68 years old.
LR’s have never been my thing since the Series II (I think) I saw on Daktari as a kid. The pseudo-Zebra stripe livery looked very cool, and I considered painting my ’68 Datsun 510 wagon like that, but didn’t have the talent to do it myself nor the money to have someone else do it.
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There’s a Series I that “played” a main role in The Gods Must Be Crazy. I laughed out loud when M’pudi, protagonist Andrew’s assistant and frequent mechanic, referred to it as “the Antichrist.”
Here’s a scene:
https://youtu.be/4RXV-p_Ec6Q?si=9UTkNTgLYn9s2tqp
I’m pretty sure that movie hasn’t aged well, but I want to watch it again. Despite the Benny Hill-ish music track.
The early ones were various shades of light green because they used surplus cockpit paint, according to Wikipedia.
Land Rover – Wikipedia
Why would you make aluminum wheels look like steelies…
Because people liked the look of the steelies but LR wanted to be able to fit bigger brakes, they reduce unsprung weight, and they won’t rust. Seems like a win-win-win to me.
I’ve never seen one in real life that isn’t silver… or grey or maybe some type of black? I dunno, they’re all the same. Green though, that looks nice.
Like other British-made luxury and sports car models, I wish it came in non-metallic British racing green.
Never seen any of those colors. All Green and black and tan’s around me.
They could’ve had amber turn signals with that design, but nooooo…
JLR’s line needs a bit of either a refresh, or a rethink to fix their reputation. It’s all getting long in the tooth.
I still would not touch one of those outside a 39 month lease.
I’ve been told by someone that tests a lot of vehicles off-road that the new Defender is one of the most technically capable 4x4s on the market with an unparalleled off-road traction control system.
But it is let down by JLR’s notorious reliability problems.
They min-maxed it into a glass cannon.
If only that had updated the unfortunately busy rear end
Huh, I’ve never thought the rear looked busy , just absolutely distinctive (in the best way). It looks good during the day and great at night with the squared lights. What looks busy on this?
I think the tail lights are busy, the offset tiny ones look weird to me. Something about the bottom side of the sliver bumper section looks bad to me. I agree it’s distinctive! I really like the rest of the vehicle, just never the back.
tiny tail lights are very silly.
It was only today that I learned the painted square on the side was intentional. Every time I have seen one so far, I assumed the owner had just removed the OE external storage box.
I think that’s because one of the first ones I ever saw DID have a storage box there, so it was weird to see so many without it. Still a strange element. It seems like it needs a company name on it or something. Or just delete it. IS IT A FLOATING ROOF OR NOT?! 🙂