Land Rover Defender 130 - long-term review

It’s time for the earth-shattering ‘ridiculously massive car has absolutely loads of space in the back’ report, because I’ve been moving house, and the Defender 130 has been getting its hands dirty.

After filling the Defender with stuff we definitely don’t need for a tip run (I maintain this is among the most satisfying things you can do in a car) we then filled it with stuff we probably don’t need to take to the new house. Along with two further lorry-loads.

And the conclusion is this – yes, the Defender has an enormous 2,291-litres of space when you fold rows three and two down (or 1,232-litres with just the third row down, shrinking to 389-litres with all eight seats in place), and yes it swallows bikes whole, and rusty BBQs, and many, many tins of old paint, but it’s not quite the total slam dunk it would appear.

There are three issues - firstly, it might have van-like litres of storage, but unlike vans with high roofs, enormous barn doors at the back and sliding doors on the side, the rear opening isn’t actually that tall and wide, as I embarrassingly discovered when trying to fit a modest-sized shelf unit in there, so the bloke I was buying it off had to follow me home with it comfortably slotted into his Ford C-Max.

Then there’s the rear door that swings open, which works fine, but not if anything is parked within a metre of your rear bumper. When you consider this car is 5.1m long, and you have a spare wheel hanging out back that extends it to 5.36m (plus extra space is required if you want to open the back door) you need a parking space the size of a football pitch, or two. Or you simply hang out into the middle of the car park so everyone has to drive around and shake their fists at you.

Finally, there’s the nagging suspicion that anything the 130 can do the 110 can do just as well… and looks less ungainly while doing it. Sure, you can only have seven seats in the 110, rather than the two three-seat benches you get in the back of the 130, but for tip runs and house moves you have almost as much space (1,875-litres) with the rear two rows folded. Of course, if you have more than five people to cart about regularly then the extra space in the 130’s third row and the additional boot space behind them is a winner.

Otherwise, you’re carting about a whole lot of rear overhang for not a lot of gain, and surely it’ll pancake those four exhaust pipes if we attempt to take it off-road. More on that soon…