Goodwood Test: 2021 Land Rover Defender 110 Review

There has been much wailing, gnashing of teeth and rending of tweed garments by those people who have failed to update their calendars in the last 30 years, decrying the fact that Land Rover has had the temerity to replace the Defender. The main thrust of the argument seems to be that by being a safe, modern, comfortable and quiet car, capable both off the road and on it, this is somehow not a new Defender.

And actually, they are right. The new car is far too good to be a new Defender. But it definitely shares its DNA with another great Land Rover name. It is certainly not the utilitarian, noisy, knobbly beast that first wore the Defender nametag. Instead, it is available with both two and four doors, the floors are flat with the sills and can be hosed out, it has an engine that can actually allow it to get out of its own way and an ability to switch effortlessly from bitumen to bog while providing comfort and a modicum of luxury. Sound familiar?

We were lucky enough to have the use of a brace of Defenders in the build-up to Goodwood SpeedWeek presented by Mastercard. Used as crew and camera vehicles they were put to the test on motorway schleps, West Sussex’s broken lanes and the acreage of the Goodwood Estate over long hours. We didn’t carry any sheep or assorted agricultural ephemera but we were grateful to climb into their comfortable, heated seats after some very long days. 

Jaguar Land Rover has generally been very successful in translating its traditional design cues into its modern range. The F-type carries enough hints of E-type to make the connection in people’s minds without veering into pastiche while the Range Rover has retained its signature clamshell bonnet, floating roof and split tailgate through four generations.

So, in the Defender we see echoes of the bonnet bulge flanked by flat-topped wings, horizontal lines across the front end, wing vents and of course the safari-style roof with its huge headroom and inset windows. Strong tail and headlight graphics also echo the original although the latter have a very sharp beam cut off which hides the verges at unlit junctions on country lanes.

It is busier, less robust looking than the original. New cars simply don’t have the same ethos of form following function; there are too many demands placed upon them both by us and by legislation for that to be true. And the desire to echo the original does create some drawbacks; the B-pillars are thick enough that you need to take care positioning the car at T-junctions so as not to hide cars approaching from the left, the safari roof lights have a structural element running through them and the rear-mounted spare hides anything smaller than another Defender in the rear view.

But despite the array of cars on site at SpeedWeek, the Defender didn’t lack for admirers and there is certainly no mistaking it for a soft-roader.

Our loan car was a step up from the base model Defender – oh but we want those steelies so much – and as such came equipped with the 240PS (177kW) four-cylinder Ingenium turbodiesel. With 430Nm (317lb ft) of torque Land Rover claims a 0-62mph time of 9.1 seconds and a top speed of 117mph, figures the old car could only achieve if being booted out of the back of a Hercules. This is allied to an eight-speed gearbox (your only choice) which could be unnervingly slow to get moving from rest at a junction or roundabout. We found it better to creep up to and out of give-ways to maintain some forward momentum which gave the gearbox a bit more get up and go.

The rest of the time however the Defender makes good progress and had that indefinable and very Land Rover trait of feeling unstoppable, as if we could simply turn off the B-road we were on and head cross country to the top of the South Downs. There are Defenders available with nearly twice the horsepower and 0-62mph times in the sub six seconds range which frankly sounds a bit silly and doesn’t seem quite right for a Defender.

Thankfully Land Rover has resisted the temptation to imbue the Defender with any unnecessary sportiness and it is all the better for it. Riding on air suspension, with steel springs to come later, the Defender is a superbly comfortable riding car with no harshness carrying through into the cabin from broken roads and potholes. Much like the car which we think it most resembles it leans over in corners like a proper 4x4 should but does it smoothly and progressively with no alarming lurching as the weight transfers and all four tyres stay in contact with the ground. There’s no disguising the fact that it is a big car but the straight edges and good forward sight lines help it stay on its own side of a country lane and the width soon stops feeling intimidating.

The cabin of the new Defender is a very nice place to spend time, particularly at the end of a long day of filming. But there is evidence of a divergence of purposes. Beautiful screens, clever controls and enough charging points to juice up every mobile phone I’ve ever owned are at odds with the fully hoseable rubber floor and the step in front of the accelerator pedal to make it easier to drive with wellies on. The driving position is spot on and encourages an elbows resting on either side (rather than out of the window as necessitated by its forebear), relaxed driving style.

The interior is pleasingly chunky and robust in feel, with exposed allen bolts on many of the surfaces and a surfeit of small crannies to cram in the ephemera of day-to-day living which involves driving between remote locations to check all is well. Consider its combination of utility and, if not out and out luxury, then at least classy comfort and it makes a lot of sense for the people it is aimed at. And more cars should offer green as an interior colour; it never failed to please people climbing into the Defender for the first or fifth time.

Touchscreens and an entirely digital dash were two other bugbears of the old Defender duffers; although presumably they don’t still light their homes with candles. There is simply no avoiding touchscreens in a car of the Defender’s complexity and ability. The myriad functions and options mean that providing physical controls for all of them would leave the driver sitting in front of something that resembles the keyboard for a cathedral organ. It really is time the anti-screen argument was laid to rest.

Besides the central touchscreen, the digital dash and the physical controls for the heating and off-road modes are all well laid out and intuitive. I particularly liked the integration of the seat heater control into the main temperature dial for each side of the car. The central screen did tend to buffer on occasion which we can put down to this being a pre-production model, and the home screen is too complex to navigate while on the move, but there are other, simpler display options.

An optional trick rear view mirror incorporates both the expected piece of reflective glass but, by flipping forward what is normally the dimming lever, transforms into a display screen for a camera mounted on the roof. This provides a view past the obstructive tailgate mounted tyre but took some getting used to, with a blurring effect noticeable at times. Other options fitted to our car included electronic diffs, configurable terrain response and All Terrain Progress Control; basically off-road cruise control. The Defender is unlikely to get stuck anywhere and the standard 3D camera system should stop you bashing it about too much off road.

We said at the start that the new Defender is no such thing. It’s too capable, too advanced and too comfortable for that. What it is, is the new Range Rover Classic. When that car launched it had all the cross country ability and hose-down utility that Land Rover had become famous for but with enough comfort to satisfy wealthy landowners and farmers who spent most of their days in their vehicles traveling from point-to-point. Of course the Classic was soon adopted by middle class families who claimed outdoorsy credentials despite never having ventured further than their own patios. A similar fate undoubtedly awaits the Defender but that doesn’t mean it lacks the capabilities of its forebear. Quite the opposite in fact.