Defending The Faith

Four hundred horsepower in a Defender? Consider us interested... and slightly alarmed

- Tom Ford

The Universal Law of Sod says that you only do something embarrassing if you have an audience, and if you manage something really cool, you’ll look up to find everyone magically looking the other way. Thus it is with cars. With a small group of Land Rover engineers and PR people waiting expectantly for me to drive away in the new Defender Works V8 – and having spent 30 minutes telling everyone how my first three cars were Series Land Rovers – I completely misjudge both the required lock and woefully arcing turning circle, and manage to fail completely to pull out of a parking space. Two big shuffles and some vague windmilling at the steering wheel later, I managed to extricate the short-wheelbase 90 from the carpark, and did what most people do to prove they’re not embarrassingly incompetent. I nailed the throttle.