DEFENDING COUNSEL

Every petrolhead should own a Defender at least once in their lives, but which one to get and what to look out for? John Evans offers wise counsel to would-be owners

- John Evans

My dad bought my mum a Land Rover Defender to teach her a lesson after she kept scraping her car down the side of the house. (It was an awkward driveway.) She was horrified and demanded its immediate return. He lost a wedge but she never scraped her car again. A Landie can have that effect. Some people love them (a family friend had a County that he wouldn’t shut up about) while others loathe them (see above). If you have a proper job for one or just buy into the whole ‘one life, live it’ thing, you’re probably of the former persuasion.

We’re considering the Defender here because it’s the version that most buyers are likely to encounter. It was launched in 1990 as the replacement for the prosaically named 90 and 110 (the numbers refer to the length of their wheelbases in inches), its name prompted by the new Discovery.