Gallery: here’s the forms the new Defender might take

A month ago we brought you these wonderful rally car renders. Well, the same set of coloured pencils has been deployed again, this time to gaze into the Land Rover Defender’s crystal ball.

The Defender, of course, ceased to be recently. But Land Rover has promised a replacement, and using its DC100 concept from 2011 as inspiration, Car Wow has looked at how the new age Defender might pick up where the outgoing one leaves off, stepping into its shoes in the no-nonsense, tough tasks it’s always been stellar at.

Click through to see them. They are not real, it must be said. We don’t even know what form the next Defender will take just yet.

But they are excellent. Let us begin with this riot control Police van. We’re almost certain you wouldn’t dare mess with it...

Next up, a Defender ready for conflict. Defenders have been used by the military since the 1950s, and have been utilised by the armies of several countries, though the British army is its most ardent fan.

This one is inspired by the SAS Defender Pink Panther, a vehicle which was shorn of much bodywork, and then painted pink. Not to be quirky, but because it’s a colour particularly good for blending in with the desert. Really.

Like its spiritual ancestor, this one’s also got a pretty strong arsenal on board. Again, you wouldn’t mess with it.

Beginning in the Amazon in 1980, the Camel Trophy was unofficially dubbed ‘the Olympics of 4x4’. This was a time when large four-wheel-drive cars were purposeful rather than chintzy, and they used the competition to prove themselves over the world’s roughest terrain.

Naturally, Defenders were pretty good at it. Here’s hoping - in hypothetical modern day equivalent of the Camel Trophy - their replacement will prove just as talented. Car Wow’s iteration has a winch, bull bars and snorkel, as well as an emergency transport option up top should your river crossings get too ambitious.

Tuned Defenders are all the rage in West London these days, thanks to the work of Kahn, Twisted and Bowler, among others.

Fitting super sticky tyres and large, powerful engines to a car with agricultural underpinnings is illogical, of course, but that doesn’t stop people dropping large sums of money on such toys. Similar treatments for the next Defender are probably inevitable, then, and here’s Car Wow’s hunch of how they might appear.

We end on something more utilitarian. While some Defenders went to war, others on big expeditions, and others to hot rod tuners, most put in faithful service on farms across our fine and wondrous country.

So here’s a Defender up to just that task. Steel wheels are less precious when it comes to traversing rocks, while a fold down canvas roof allows easier loading of sheep into its load bay. It’s the least glamorous of all the new Defender’s possible uses, but surely it’s the most relevant?