Land Rover operates four off-road driving schools in North America—in Asheville, North Carolina; Carmel, California; Manchester, Vermont; and Montebello, Quebec. Each affords opportunities to drive unpaved terrain ranging from moderately difficult to creepy-crawly. The schools are a profitable enterprise that also serves a bigger purpose: selling new vehicles. Participants can use their personal vehicles or pilot a new Land Rover or Range Rover from the school fleets, but this year the parent company put a little spin on the programs, adding vintage Land Rover Defenders to the school inventories.
The idea came from Kim McCullough, Jaguar Land Rover vice president of marketing for North America, a serious enthusiast whose résumé includes participation in Italy’s Mille Miglia revival in a personal Jaguar XK120. She saw this Defender Experience program as a way to help promote Land Rover’s impending 70th anniversary in 2018.
“Since it is the 70th anniversary, we want to help keep it alive,” said McCullough. “We thought, let’s put it out there and build some awareness.” And, of course, with a new Defender anticipated in the not-too-distant future, there’s more to the awareness aspect than touting Land Rover’s history.
Active Heritage
These Defenders are definitely not new vehicles. The Defender 90s and 110s are parceled out, one per school, for what is called the Land Rover Heritage Program. The numerical designations relate to their 90- and 110-inch wheelbases. The program is run separately from the standard Land Rover Experience, for which the entire Land Rover brand portfolio—Discovery, Discovery Sport, Evoque, Range Rover, and Range Rover Sport, and Velar—is represented.
Let us put a finer point on “not new.” Tracing its roots back to the company’s 1948 origins, the Defender (née Series I) went through a half-dozen evolutionary updates before Land Rover punched its ticket on January 29, 2016. By that time, the Defender 90 had been absent from U.S. showrooms for almost 20 years. And the funky four-door 110, with its external roll bars, was in North America for a single model year, 1993, as a limited edition; 509 were sold in the U.S. and 23 in Canada.
Like any out-of-production vehicle, especially one as well loved as this, Defenders have become serious collectibles, commanding escalating prices at auction. “We’ve already seen some going for six figures,” said McCullough. Also commanding six figures: a Series 1 restored by the factory.
Rare as they may be here, some two million Defenders found their way into customers’ hands worldwide over the vehicle’s 67-year run, and about 75 percent of them are still in use, according to Land Rover. In the end, although sales were still reasonably strong, profitability kept losing altitude because of high labor costs. As a survivor from another era in manufacturing, the Defender’s assembly entailed too much handwork.
The Quail
We signed up with the Land Rover school headquartered at the Quail Lodge in California’s Carmel Valley. Our Defender was a hardtop 90, model year 1996, and it was a testament to the assembly standards of its time. The body panels, for example, are secured by rivets, and panel gaps seem to have been conceived for auxiliary ventilation. External door hinges enhance the Defender’s rugged persona and also allow for easy removal of the doors. Another anachronism is that the Defender requires multiple keys: one for the ignition, one for the side door locks, and a third for the gas cap. The interior is spartan by today’s standards—no touchscreen, no navi, no Wi-Fi, minimalist audio—and our example showed signs of its two decades in service.
While this is clearly a blast from the past, we are not talking Fred Flintstone here. There’s a 3.9-liter pushrod V-8 under the hood making 182 horsepower and 232 lb-ft of torque, mated to a five-speed manual transmission. The four-wheel-drive system employs a manually locking center differential and open differentials at both ends. The Defender rides a coil-spring suspension with control arms and anti-roll bars front and rear. Minimum ground clearance is 9.0 inches, maximum fording depth 20.0 inches, maximum forward approach angle is 51 degrees, and maximum departure is 36 degrees—figures that better those of any current Land Rover or Range Rover product you can buy new today. There are disc brakes at all four corners, squeezed by four-piston calipers front and two-pistons rear.
While these specs aren’t particularly impressive today, particularly in contrast to a Jeep Wrangler Rubicon, in the context of their times the Defenders were as rough and ready as any. And if the ’96 Defender seems a little dated, consider its distant ancestor. The design for the original Series I Land Rover was derived from that of a World War II Jeep, and it was primordial by today’s standards. The 1.6-liter pushrod four was rated for 50 horsepower, the suspension employed elliptical leaf springs, and concessions to comfort were few.
On the other hand, the Series I box section frame was as solid as a bridge, the electrical system was 12 volts—a rarity at the time—and the four-wheel-drive system was similar to that of our ’96 Defender: open diffs, with a manual two-speed transfer case, a manually locking center differential, and a four-speed manual transmission.
The Carmel Labyrinth
Land Rover’s Carmel Valley school involves a labyrinth of trails in the heavily wooded heights above the valley. During the dry summer months, the trails aren’t particularly difficult; occasional patches of deep dust pose the most significant traction challenges, and those are brief.
It becomes more interesting in the winter, when rain makes the trails slurpy, but wet weather had not yet arrived when we made our visit in the late fall. Nevertheless, we emerged with a solid respect for this iconic Land Rover. It had a no-nonsense persona, but its off-road fun-to-drive factor was high.
“When you’re driving the Defender,” McCullough observed, “you’re involved. When you’re in a manual Defender, you’re more involved.”
Accompanied by Justin Demayo, a Monterey-area native who runs Land Rover’s Carmel Valley school and knows every twist and turn of its trails, we buckled up and rolled out of the parking lot and onto dirt.
Two decades equate to old age for most vehicles, but our veteran Defender exhibited no geriatric symptoms as we motored up and down the dusty heights above Quail Lodge. The D90 trudged up even the steepest hills with only occasional brief episodes of wheelspin, motored down equally steep downhills at a comfortable crawl, and generally inspired confidence.
Suspension compliance was surprisingly benign, on par with a new Discovery we tried for contrast, at least in the dirt (we didn’t exercise the Defender on pavement). And nothing scraped underneath in the deep ruts we encountered from time to time.
Demerits? Very minor. The worm-and-roller hydraulic power steering, though surprisingly tactile, was slow by contemporary standards—3.8 turns lock-to-lock. And for a vehicle with a 92.9-inch wheelbase, the 38.4-foot turning circle seemed more appropriate for a World War II landing craft. More than once we had to execute three-point maneuvers to make it around tight turns without scraping timber, turns we made in one pass with the Disco. But that in no way diminished the day.
The Price of Play
Viewed simply as an automotive novelty, the Defender Experience is an entertaining retro trip, albeit an expensive one—$1200 for half a day or $1500 to play all day.
But as already suggested, there’s more to this program than lending an historic element to the 70th anniversary season. Land Rover CEO Ralf Speth has already acknowledged that an all-new Defender is on the near horizon. The question is what will it be and when. Speth has been quoted as saying that the new Defender will utilize elements from the current Land Rover hardware inventory and that he has driven the prototype, pronouncing it “even more capable” than its predecessor.
Land Rover has also let it be known that the resurrection will entail a trio of Defender models, including a high-performance SVR edition heated up by the Jaguar Land Rover Special Vehicle Operations hot-rod shop. Beyond that, it’s all speculation.
However, it does seem clear that the revivalist Defender will bear little, if any, resemblance to the DC100 concept vehicle that Land Rover displayed at the 2011 Frankfurt auto show. The Defender faithful dismissed that one as wimpy. As McCullough observed, “That’s why we put things out there, to get consumer feedback.”
And the Land Rover Heritage Program? “It’s a fun thing to do—keeps the conversation going. And even though it has been 20 years since there’s been a Defender in the U.S., there’s still a core of enthusiast interest.”
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