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61 Yrs: Land Rover Defender

The SVX was the Defender line’s last hurrah

By Gunnar Heinrich

BOLTED together in a fashion so simple that a caveman could do it any able do-it-yourselfer could muster, it’s been said recently that the Land Rover Defender née Land Rover “90″ and “110″ has seen the sun set on it’s long-lived production.

Like some aged British sitcom representing a Thatcherite Britain where Foxhunts and whisky were a way of life neither to be outlawed or overly tariffed, the Defenders were the last stand against an overly modernized “tread lightly” off road campaign across the world. Parked next to a Range Rover Sport or a Land Rover Freelander and you can see where the day’s economic realities lay.

Stateside, there was a period in the 1990s where the Defender 90 proved more the alternative boulevardier in shock yellow or jet black. We can thank Land Rover for providing us with an eye-catchingly rugged alternative to your average Jeep Wrangler. Needless to the say, the Jeep’s longevity outlived the Landie – albeit the Defender and its similar ancestry marked time off road for some 61 years.

That makes the Defender series twice as old Mercedes’  tricenarian Gelaendewagen.

It’s somewhat sad that this news came to us on a Friday night in Autumn’s indifferent cool. One would’ve thought a gala of outdoor festivities would be in order; celebrating the past while positioning for the future.

But since Land Rover has no immediate Defender replacement (suggested 2013), this drab bit of news arrives less as a happy so-long to Landie’s simple terra-firma virtues and more the quiet announcement of a low-key funeral held for an old, but patrotic soldier.