← Land Rover

Defender

The name arrived in 1990. The idea is as old as Land Rover itself.

The vehicles that would become the Defender started as the Ninety and One Ten in 1983 (named for their wheelbase in inches), the first Land Rovers with coil-spring suspension instead of the old leaf springs. The 'Defender' name itself was only adopted in 1990, largely to distinguish the working Land Rover from the newly launched Discovery.

That original-shape Defender stayed in production, with running updates, until January 2016, when tightening safety and emissions regulation finally ended the line after well over six decades of continuous Land Rover utility-vehicle production in some form.

The new Defender launched in 2020 on a modern unibody platform — a significant engineering departure from the old body-on-frame design — while deliberately keeping the boxy silhouette and short overhangs that make a Defender recognizable at a glance.