Why we’re running it: Can an extra-long, diesel 4x4 justify a place in daily motoring life in 2024?
Month 1 - Specs
Life with a Land Rover Defender 130: Month 1
Welcoming the Defender 130 to the fleet - 5 June 2024
No sooner had I written that the Ford Ranger Raptor had left Autocar's long-term fleet (to join Steve Cropley's personal fleet, and fair play to him), a similarly large vehicle has arrived to replace it.
It's a Land Rover Defender 130, the longest variant yet of JLR's most rugged 4x4, the car that represented the final peg of a "three-legged stool" when it was launched in 2020, alongside the Discovery and Range Rover. (And given there are multiples of Discovery and Range Rover, I still wonder if there's room for more than one Defender type.)
The 130 lives on the same 3022mm wheelbase as the Defender 110 but has had 340mm added behind the back axle, with a slight lower-body lift back there at the same time to reduce compromise to the car's departure angle.
The Defender was a pretty big car already, and now it's a really big one, at 5099mm long without a spare wheel and 5358mm long with it, as here. Like a 110 it can be optioned with a third row of seats, although in that form it can't also be specified with the jump seat in the front, because nine seats are too many for a passenger car.
The last time a Defender joined Autocar's long-term fleet, a very pleasant 90, I had the pleasure of working through the configurator and picking the choice options: steel wheels, blue paint, white root, chunky tyres.
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Fair play to the company formally known as Prince though, if you can make good business out of peddling these shit boxes, then why not.
Rivian does it better. This Land-Rover was obsolete the moment it launched.
Unless you want an engine, like most people do.
Does what better
£4000 to make your car look like its been left out in all weathers for years, and never washed or polished, rather than the brand new vehicle it is? And whats with the lack of rear side windows? It looks like a very large and very dark cave in there, how much nicer a place it would be with normally tinted windows all round.
...lack of rear side windows... Catnip why would you be sitting in the boot, did you read the article.