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One of the things that gets spouted every time we are told the Defender has to be replaced is EU regs on pedestrian safety. How come Mercedes still make the G wagon and Jeep still import the Wrangler? both have very similar frontal profiles.
 
You can carry on making vehicles to the same design such as the G wagon, Jeep etc and the Defender in its current shape, as they have type approval at the time of launch, new vehicle design have to conform to current pedestrian safety bollix.

Lotus wanted to change Morris Marina/ Range Rover door handles on the Esprit in 1984 to some other type and they could not afford to spend the 2 million quid on seeking type approval for the whole car at the time, so they lasted until 1993 with those handles, even tiny changes mean the vehicle has go through type approval again. So that's why the Defender, G Wagon and the Jeep to some extent have remained the same, I guess its economies of scale too, the Jeep has a healthy sales record, the G Wagon is sold as a premium truck, whereas the Defender has declining sales, its not really marketed that well and its slightly more expensive to manufacture compared to the other offerings from LR.
 
Bump said:
What a cock.

What they actually mean is

"Our predecessors who designed and built the original series and subsequent defender did too good a job at designing it so it could be repaired and kept going in the field, this means there are still a lot out there, even 60 years on. This is really bad for business as, although we get a small cut from pattern parts, we make very little money off them, so, we need to design something more in line with modern cars, something which will be in the scrapyard by the 10th birthday. That'll keep the share holders happy."
Click to expand...

My sentiments exactly. The way I see it, all of this is a marketing ploy to get the yanks into a curvy, well padded defenders with 30 airbags on tap in case they drive into a mailbox. What they're forgetting is that the defender was never designed to be any of such things in the first place. In Africa, when most people think of land rovers, its the defender and how it opened up relatively inaccessible places that comes to mind.
I'd bet every penny in saying that if they do go ahead and replace defenders with that monstrosity, 20 years down the line, we would have 80 year old defenders towing their 'replacements' on trailers to the breakers.
 
ifloochies said:
My sentiments exactly. The way I see it, all of this is a marketing ploy to get the yanks into a curvy, well padded defenders with 30 airbags on tap in case they drive into a mailbox. What they're forgetting is that the defender was never designed to be any of such things in the first place. In Africa, when most people think of land rovers, its the defender and how it opened up relatively inaccessible places that comes to mind.
I'd bet every penny in saying that if they do go ahead and replace defenders with that monstrosity, 20 years down the line, we would have 80 year old defenders towing their 'replacements' on trailers to the breakers.
Click to expand...

Without doubt.
 
waldershelf said:
One of the things that gets spouted every time we are told the Defender has to be replaced is EU regs on pedestrian safety. How come Mercedes still make the G wagon and Jeep still import the Wrangler? both have very similar frontal profiles.
Click to expand...

Merc still sells the G-Wagen? In the same way that LR still sells the Defender.

And the Wrangler has been heavily redesigned over the last couple of releases. In fact, the Wrangler didn't exist at the time the 110 came out - it was the CJ. Since then Jeep have produced the YJ, TJ and JK. It does show that you can keep the traditional looks while meeting impact regs though.

Mind you, they made a pig's ear of the Cherokee replacement.

The EU, US, Indian and Chinese regs are converging towards a common standard so who knows what the next Wrangler will look like? Must be due for one soon, the JK's been around since '07.
 
go back to basics an get rid of all sensors make it a light vehicle that does not cost a fortune to repair and service an they got a winner
 
I think the upshot of all this is JLR want out of the utility truck business. No matter how much we bleat about it the replacement for the Defender is not going to be anything like what we want i.e. a modern take on the existing model.
 
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