E S S A Y
DEATH OF THE DEFENDER PAUL J. DRISCOLL
O
n Friday, January 29th of 2016, the last Land Rover Defender rolled off the assembly line in the Midlands town of Solihull, England. The demise of this legendary line of four-wheel drive workhorses marks a significant milestone in automotive history. The world seems just a bit smaller and a lot softer for it. Land Rover, now owned by the Indian car maker, Tata Motors, continues to make its line of luxury SUVs—the Range Rover and the smaller, The author’s 1965 Series IIA Land Rover. The hole in the bumper accepts the hand-crank rod. more affordable Discovery LR4s, among other models. Series vehicles. That old car on the cover Oh, the company almost immediately of whatever outdoor gear and clothing announced that the Defender would catalog is lying around your coffee table? return—in some fashion or another. As I Almost always an old Land Rover. write this, the release of the neo-Defender Rovers, as they are almost universally is imminent, although almost three years known, are uncompromised vehicles of overdue. We learn from the company adventure and wild places. At one time that the new model—built in Slovakia— in the 1970s, the company claimed—not will be “respectful of its past, but not unrealistically—that the first motor vehiharnessed by it.” cle the majority of the world’s population Gone forever is the true utilitarian rig laid eyes upon was a Land Rover. Rovers known the world over. were early penetrators of the African, We all know these cars from newsSouth American, Australian, and Cenreels of United Nation vehicles and the tral Asian interiors. For better or worse, iconic images of African safari touring wherever Brits were to be found—from rigs. These are Land Rover Defenders, the Caribbean to the Ganges, from Lahore or their predecessors, the Land Rover to Nairobi—Land Rovers followed.
