Photo: Andrew Alewine via Behance
Up until Ford unveiled the new Bronco, it was Land Rover who was enjoying the best iconic SUV revival of the year with its equally excellent 2020 Defender.
The American model stole a bit of its thunder, yes, but that doesn't make the new Defender any better than it is - it just meant it lost its place in the media's attention for a while. Unlike the Bronco, people have also had the chance to drive the new Land Rover, and the consensus seems to be that it's a great piece of machinery that manages to fuse on-road manners with off-road capabilities in a practical and good-looking package.
As for the critics, they mostly circle around two aspects. First off is the new Defender's price. Although there are base models that aren't that expensive, they're still nowhere near as accessible as the Defenders of yore used to be. The days when these vehicles were the workhorse on a farm are gone, and the quicker people realize it, the better.
The second quarrel part of the public has with the new model is the intrinsically complex nature of the vehicle with all of its clever electronics, air suspension, and what-not. When you're stranded in the middle of nowhere with a broken-down Defender and only a tool kit and your mechanical knowledge at hand, you don't want to be dealing with something that requires a Ph.D. from MIT to fix. For an SUV that looks so suited otherwise to overlanding, this criticism makes a lot more sense than the first one. However, until the new Defender proves to have reliability issues, it's still more of a potential problem than an actual certainty.
A third thing people complained about was the lack of a pickup. Sometime after the initial launch, Land Rover released the Hard Top option, a van-like version of the Defender that is as close to a pickup Defender as anything coming out of the company's factory doors will ever be.
Andrew Alewine, a designer now working for Hyundai Design America in Irvine, California, isn't happy to let things as they are. Not only did he come up with a truck version for the British legendary SUV, but he went one step further: he imagined what a full-size heavy-duty version of it would look like, completely ignoring the new model's redesign.
And aren't we glad that he did? The resulting behemoth captures the spirit of the original model perfectly and makes this very unlikely transition for a British model look seamless. Sure, Land Rover would lose its last remaining farmer buyers in the UK but would gain a much larger customer base in the US. Not to mention the respect of almost everyone across the globe for coming up with such a strong, aggressive design. Combine that with all the lore behind the Defender badge, and you have a winning combination. If only you could mimic what happened in that A-HA music video and get behind the wheel of this thing only for one minute...
As for the critics, they mostly circle around two aspects. First off is the new Defender's price. Although there are base models that aren't that expensive, they're still nowhere near as accessible as the Defenders of yore used to be. The days when these vehicles were the workhorse on a farm are gone, and the quicker people realize it, the better.
The second quarrel part of the public has with the new model is the intrinsically complex nature of the vehicle with all of its clever electronics, air suspension, and what-not. When you're stranded in the middle of nowhere with a broken-down Defender and only a tool kit and your mechanical knowledge at hand, you don't want to be dealing with something that requires a Ph.D. from MIT to fix. For an SUV that looks so suited otherwise to overlanding, this criticism makes a lot more sense than the first one. However, until the new Defender proves to have reliability issues, it's still more of a potential problem than an actual certainty.
A third thing people complained about was the lack of a pickup. Sometime after the initial launch, Land Rover released the Hard Top option, a van-like version of the Defender that is as close to a pickup Defender as anything coming out of the company's factory doors will ever be.
Andrew Alewine, a designer now working for Hyundai Design America in Irvine, California, isn't happy to let things as they are. Not only did he come up with a truck version for the British legendary SUV, but he went one step further: he imagined what a full-size heavy-duty version of it would look like, completely ignoring the new model's redesign.
And aren't we glad that he did? The resulting behemoth captures the spirit of the original model perfectly and makes this very unlikely transition for a British model look seamless. Sure, Land Rover would lose its last remaining farmer buyers in the UK but would gain a much larger customer base in the US. Not to mention the respect of almost everyone across the globe for coming up with such a strong, aggressive design. Combine that with all the lore behind the Defender badge, and you have a winning combination. If only you could mimic what happened in that A-HA music video and get behind the wheel of this thing only for one minute...
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