DEFENDER OF THE FAITH

Land Rover’s all-new Defender proves to be worth the wait and is now as capable on-road as it is off it. It’s no driver’s car but as a do-everything machine it’s hard to fault and we wouldn’t be embarrassed to have one share garage space with a more traditional Evo car

- STUART GALLAGHER

HIT’S NOT THE CAR THAT WILL APPEAR on many, if any Evo reader’s list of dream cars for a dream drive, but we’ve always said that The Thrill of Driving comes in all shapes and sizes, on and off-road, and we think you’ll be interested in how this all-new Defender fares. Available as both a five-door 110 and three-door 90, the new Defender is offered with a variety of four-cylinder 2-litre petrol and diesel engines and a 3-litre mild-hybrid straight-six petrol, and while it the latter that we spent most of our time driving it is the former that will be coming to India. And it’s really rather good. Impressively so, an example of what’s achievable when you set out to design and build a car fit for the purpose it’s meant for rather than crudely adapting what you have in the parts store and pretending it’s something that it clearly isn’t. Rivals could learn a great deal from this approach.

Land Rover’s Ingenium mild-hybrid engine was first introduced in 2019 for the Range Rover and now finds its way further down the food chain in the new Defender to join two four-cylinder turbo diesels (the D200 and D240) and a P300 four-cylinder petrol. This P400 mild hybrid is currently the only straight-six available in the Defender, although a diesel will arrive soon enough, with the 3-litre unit featuring both a conventional twin-scroll turbocharger and a 48V electric supercharger. There’s also a belt-integrated starter motor in lieu of an alternator, with a 48V lithium-ion battery that stores recuperated energy as the car slows.