12 things you didn’t know about the new Land Rover Defender

If you’re the type who thinks anything other than a Defender with leaky doors and a faint aroma of sheep’s bottom is sacrilege, look away now. The engine line up from launch includes a pair of 2.0-litre four-cylinder turbodiesels (197bhp or 237bhp), a 296bhp turbocharged four-cylinder petrol and a 394bhp 3.0-litre turbocharged and supercharged petrol inline-six, but a plug-in hybrid is coming. Yep, no technical details yet, but a Defender capable of several miles of zero-emissions, battery-powered running will go on sale in 2021. Pitchforks at the ready.

The Defender doors are about more than just those fancy exposed rivets for maximum macho, the interior door skins are in fact structural, acting as an anchor for the window motors and door locks on their inner face. As a result they lose a trim layer, so you get extra elbow room. The interior ergonomics are already a world away from the disaster that was the old Defender, where you drove with your nose pressed against the windscreen and your door-side arm crushed into a chicken wing… so this is a bonus, really.

Six pre-sets to be precise – Normal, Wade, Rock Crawl, Mud and Ruts, Grass/Gravel/Snow and Sand – each subtly altering the differentials, throttle response and traction sensitivity to make mincemeat of whatever mother nature has cooked up for you. Alternatively, you can hang your head in shame, select ‘Auto’ and let the car’s sensors determine the surface you’re on and tweak everything accordingly. Got your off-road gold badge? By all means delve into the touchscreen, configure your settings manual and save your preferences. Let’s off-road!

Urban driving, the grind and gnaw of teeth and traffic. It’s an awful place to drive anything, let alone a car over two metres wide and five metres long. But no other SUV does it better. Seriously. You have good visibility and upright flanks, so you know where your edges and corners are, and the 360 camera system is a work of genius. The turning circle is surprising, you’re taller than taxis (that’s important), see stuff coming in your periphery, are more aware. All the controls are well calibrated too: steering weight, accelerator action, eight-speed auto gearbox – it’s an easy car to drive.

Only available on the 394bhp, turbo and s’charged straight-six £78,800 P400 X 110 (or the £74,140 three-door 90 version) the aim here is efficiency, not performance enhancement. Bits in addition to the engine include a 48V 200Wh lithium-ion battery on the rear axle, an e-supercharger that runs off said battery (and helps to build boost in the turbo quickly to negate lag) and a belt-integrated starter generator that harvests energy when you lift off the throttle to charge the battery and can feed up to 105lb ft of back to the crank to restart the engine and take some of the load of the engine under acceleration. What you might notice is the engine cutting out below 3km/h, before you’ve come to a stop, slight electrical assistance when you take off again and, according to Land Rover, a 6g/km of CO2 saving. Hardly seems worth it, does it?

In a move nobody saw coming, the Defender takes a leaf out of Tesla’s book. Never thought I'd write that. The Defender is now very much a connected car, and we’re not just talking about its ability to hook up to a horse box. It has no fewer than 14 ‘modules’ that can be updated over the air using its permanent 4G connection, including the brakes, suspension and engine so Land Rover can continue to improve your car while it sits on your driveway. Updates take around 30 minutes, there’s no need for dealer software updates anymore and problems can be identified and sent automatically to your local workshop so parts can be ordered ahead of time.

Powersliding a Defender? Yep, it’s possible, albeit in an endless, sandy African wilderness, probably not advisable on a moist roundabout outside Milton Keynes. Then again, powersliding a mobility scooter is technically possible. The point is this, there’s an inherent balance to driving this car you wouldn’t expect. Despite our loaded roof rack in Namibia it never felt overly top-heavy, tipping was never on the cards, it’s rock-solid even when you’re cocking about on a dried-up river bed. It benefits from a broad stance, definitely less tilt and topple than a Disco 5, and despite its brick-like profile you’ll barely notice side winds on the motorway.

Happy days! It’s the return of the optional dicky seat we were all hoping for. A normal and extremely broad centre console is fitted as standard, but should you occasionally need space for an extra bum, you can swap that out for a third seat in the front. Tick that box on the short wheelbase ‘90’ version and that means you’ve got yourself a three-door, six-seat SUV – that’s worth it for the novelty value alone, surely? Folded down, the back of the seat masquerades as a centre console with a couple of drink holders, a tray for your phone and others bits, and a bank of 12V and USB power outlets. Pull a strap, unfurl it and you’ve got space for three.

Nick Rogers, chief engineer on the new Defender's conception: "We had a few sessions round at my house, a few curries, a few beers - always the best way to motivate engineers. The first thing we did was package studies and calculations about what the suspension need to be, what would the approach angle need to be, all that really technical stuff. At the end of one evening, perhaps I was slightly too passionate, but we agreed we'd make one in a month.

“So we took a Range Rover Sport and attacked it quite heavily underneath and created the first simulator. We drove it around the Gaydon circuit and my god, nobody could believe how good it was - so agile and such a hoot.

“Mike Cross took Ralf [Speth, CEO JLR] for a very exciting ride. He also took Mr Tata. Mike has a fantastic way of helping them see round Gaydon, looking out the back window. And we also, just to clinch it, sent her over to Big Red in Dubai, to make sure it really was the best in the sand. After that there was no doubt that it was going to be absolutely incredible."

See the way the 10-inch touchscreen and shelf (formed by the magnesium-alloy beam running the full width of the dash) makes a trio of rectangular shapes? That’s a cue lifted directly from the original Land Rover. And that’s not all. Nick Rogers told us he set his interns a little exercise: to find one component on the 1948 Land Rover that wasn’t functional. One thing, anything, that puts design before function. They couldn’t. And it’s that philosophy he tried to replicate from the outset.

With the air-suspension in its maximum off-road height, ground clearance is 291mm (around 50mm more than both the Mercedes G-Class and Jeep Wrangler), which just so happens to be the same height as a wine bottle standing on its end. In theory, then, it should drive straight over it. It can’t, we tried – snuck under the front bumper alright, but fell over somewhere around the front axle. Oh well.

It has a wading depth of 900mm and a fancy wading mode that, among other things, drags the brakes to dry them off so you’ve got full stopping power when you return to dry land, and has approach, breakover and departure angles of 380, 280 and 400 respectively, or 380, 310 and 400 on the 90 – not best in class in every department but still a world-class set of stats for an off-roader. Towing capacity of 3,500kg matches the Merc as best-in-class, too.