Full disclosure: I own a 2012 Land Rover Discovery 4 (LR4). I bought it new, and it's got well over 130,000 miles (210,000 km) on the clock, so that means I'll be a little biased, but also talking out of my personal experience, which is not something a lot of the brand's detractors can claim.
The person who made the clip you can watch way down below is called Andrew St. Pierre White, and he's definitely driven a lot of Land Rovers in his time. He's a bit of a legend in the world of off-roading, broadly speaking, with an emphasis on overlanding. Let's put it this way: if he's talking about the subject, we better shut up and listen. Me, even more so since I'm by no means an off-roading expert.
I'll start by saying I agree with his conclusion; it's the way he gets there I have a problem with. And it starts right from the beginning: "Never before has there been such universal disappointment in a new model," Andrew claims, and you instantly start to wonder whether you live in the same universe as him.
Is he talking about the 2020 Defender everyone's been praising for its exemplary marriage between on-road manners and off-road abilities? Is it the same Defender almost everyone agrees has a beautiful exterior design and a well-made, practical cabin?
What Andrew St. Pierre White forgets to add is he's talking from the perspective of a fan of the old Defender. He never articulates that idea throughout the video, but it's pretty obvious if you read between the lines. Plus, as an overlander, he naturally has an affinity for older, less complicated vehicles that are easy to maintain and less likely to break down.
He even throws in a gripe with the advertising for the new model. The voiceover in one of the presentation videos claims the 2020 Defender was designed and built "without compromise". No one in their right mind could ever believe that, yet the one compromise Andrew points at is the 19-inch minimum wheel size - dictated by the size of the disk brakes, which in turn, is dictated by the mass of the vehicle.
Zero bias? Good luck finding it
Next, Mr. White says he picked unbiased reviewers to support his claim, but if we're being fair, nobody is really unbiased. Some may be on Jaguar Land Rover's payroll, which means you're almost literally hearing JLR's PR department's words through their mouths. Others are not affiliated with the carmaker in any way, but they too can have preconceived opinions, or they can favor a competing brand. Zero bias is a myth and an illusion.
Throughout the video, Andrew St. Pierre White repeatedly admits that Land Rover's Terrain Response System is "phenomenally good" and that the new Defender is very capable off-road. He never claims otherwise. What he does say is good off-road capabilities don't make a vehicle a good off-roader. That's the main point he's trying to get across, and he's right. The way he does it, though, is a bit questionable, and we'll get into it right away.
"[With the new Defender] you're not buying an off-roader. You're buying a car that's nice in town and it's also very good off-road. There are a lot of those available and this is going to be one of the better ones." In his view, a good off-roader is a vehicle where there's plenty of equipment to adapt, change, modify, to make them even better off-road. Models such as the Jeep Wrangler, the Land Cruiser 70 Series, early Land Rover Discoveries (first and second generations), he says. The new Defender, he says, is a great off-the-shelf off-roader, but is mighty hard to customize.
In support of his claim, he brings up the now-notorious case of the Defender the TFL team got that, among other things, should have been fitted with a winch. A winch is a basic off-road accessory and one that should be relatively easy to mount on a vehicle. While trying to do just that for the TFL-bound Defender, the dealership technicians managed to cut through a cable harness that made the vehicle inoperable. Making matters worse, the harness was not replaceable, so now the TFL team is waiting for another vehicle - the third, since the first had some fatal engine problems and had to be replaced.
That looks pretty bad
The fact the first one had to be scrapped as well after just 167 miles (268 km) doesn't look good either. The first issue will undoubtedly help perpetuate the reliability trope surrounding Land Rover vehicles (though it should be pointed that the vehicle remained operational and came into the dealership on its own wheels). However, the second one can only be described as human error helped by a poor design choice to have that miraculously unreplaceable cable harness mounted in the wrong place.
After talking with the manager of his local ARB store (a major off-road accessories and equipment company) who confirmed they don't offer bull bars and winches for the new model right now, Andrew concludes that "fitting accessories to a Defender is going to be tough". Except it isn't, and there are plenty of modded Defenders out there to prove it. Hell, even the one driven by Ronnie Dahl, one of the reviewers he quotes, has a bull bar mounted. Drawing conclusions based on a single experience and ignoring tons of contradicting examples out there makes it look as though you have an agenda.
The thing he does next can only contribute to that. He mentions the "hopeless" reliability of Land Rovers saying, "it's a worldwide reputation". Well, building a bad reputation isn't that hard if enough people jump on board. Clearing it, on the other hand, is a lot more difficult, and nobody's in any hurry to acknowledge the progress the company has made in the last decade or so.
He then does his part to help maintain this reputation by reading comments from people who've never owned a Land Rover but are simply perpetuating the stereotype by flexing their funny muscles to come up with the best joke (and some are indeed pretty good). Is that professional? About as much as yelling "it's a fact", as if that can make things any truer.
The whole thing feels as though he is slightly upset by being put on the blacklist by JLR and is taking it all out on the new Defender and the brand as a whole. Plus, as a fan of the old model, he might also be upset about the direction Land Rover's taken with the new one.
His conclusion, though, is 100 percent right. His argument for it, however, sits at a much lower percentage than that. He could have said the new Defender relies way too much on electronics to make it a proper off-roader, and it would have been both correct and enough.
He could have called the reliability issues into question to some degree as well but making it sound as if owning a Land Rover means living your life in the dealership's service center is plain wrong. Toward the end, Andrew says he won't buy the new Defender, and knowing him and what he's about, that shouldn't really come as a surprise.
What do you think? Am I jumping too quickly to defend my car's brand or is Mr. White jumping to conclusions? Or maybe a little bit of both?
"Boy meets car, boy loves car, boy gets journalism degree and starts job writing and editing at a car magazine" - 5/5. (Vlad Mitrache if he was a movie) Full profile
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