Land Rover Defends The Faith

Edward Niedermeyer
by Edward Niedermeyer
land rover defends the faith

Often times concept vehicles portray an already-decided future direction. Other times, concepts are built to suggest one possibility in an ongoing debate about a model’s future. Land Rover has taken the latter approach with its new DC100 concept, telling Autocar that the Frankfurt-bound concept

builds upon essential elements of the Defender’s character and allows us to open the debate and inspire people to dream about Defenders of the future. The DC100 isn’t a production-ready concept, but the beginning of a four-year journey to design a relevant Defender for the 21st century.

Will the new Defender get an all-new version of its rugged, body-on-frame chassis, or will it move to a re-engineered version of the T5 platform that underpins the Discovery and Range Rover Sport? That’s all still to be decided as Landie navigates a sales and regulatory environment that makes life extremely difficult for old-school SUVs. And because the Defender has lost much of its developing-world market to more reliable Toyota 4x4s, I’d guess the next Defender will be a less-traditional interpretation of the original. While that’s all being hashed out ahead of the 2015 launch date, at least we have an attractive concept to go along with a compelling debate.


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  • Rental Man Rental Man on Aug 31, 2011

    Kosher? Maybe the star of David rims... Business case? 3 door, 9 pass. Wagon, pick up truck in different wheelbases. Base bare bones like an African jungle vehicle and an American beach cruiser for rich dad kid's. Take a look at the extended family of the Wrangler. More doors more sales. That is what you do with an icon. BTW check out specs for a Diesel high MPG truck. Dream on...

  • Slance66 Slance66 on Sep 01, 2011

    Are they serious about the aspect ratio on those tires? Those look like 35's. On an off road vehicle? If that's what it ships with, then they are clearly selling a car with a certain look more than an actual intent to perform.

  • MaintenanceCosts This class of car competes hard with Chargers/Challengers and modded diesel pickups for the douchey-driving crown.
  • 28-Cars-Later Corey - I think I am going to issue a fatwa demanding a cool kids car meetup in July somewhere in the Ohio region.
  • Master Baiter Might as well light 50 $100 bills on fire.
  • Mike1041 At $300K per copy they may secure as much as 2 or 3 deposits of $1,000
  • Sgeffe Why on Earth can’t you just get the torque specs and do it yourself if you’re so-inclined?!
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