The Land Rover Defender 110 is quite possibly the best Luxury Off Road / Snow Terrain SUV on the road today. You can get as much HP that you could ever handle, a high stance of 11.5″ of ground clearance, and enough room to take the family and all your gear up to the slopes.
Style is always a personal and more subjective feature, but I think most everyone could agree that this is a tough looking, yet elegant and refined looking vehicle. You get a lot of great options to customize the paint, trim, rims etc to really design this to your personal preference. You can go from “Estate” looking where you may have your riding breeches on, all the way to gearing up to take on the Rubicon Trail.
I think that the Defender gets a bit of a bad rep for being a just a typical “Grocery Getter” for suburban mom’s, and often overlooked for its extreme utility for mountain roads. Sure, every suburban mom wants to ride high, enjoy a roomy and comfortable cabin, have room for all the kids, and be assured that they have absolute control and traction when the bad weather hits. So… I get it why this is so appealing to this audience. Let’s not stop there…
The Defender is an off road monster and out-performs every SUV in this category. You would have to go with a Jeep Wrangler or the new Ford Bronco to rival with off road performance, but those lack polish, refinement, and comfort for long road trips.
The only negatives of the Defender 110 are poor gas mileage (17/20 MPG) and lower reliability on electronics, features, and parts. Land Rover was 3rd from the bottom on JD Power’s Reliability Survey. However! I’m delighted that their new CEO, Thierry Bollore publicly acknowledged the issue early in 2021 and has committed to making immediate improvements across the line. I’m very keen on watching this trend and would love to see Land Rover near the top of the list being much more reliable. When they do, I feel that the Defender will be the #1 SUV.
The Defender 110 is the larger, 4 Door counter to the 2 Door 90. Personally I like the larger size of the 110 to smooth out the bumps, increase on road stability, and offer enough room for all your gear.
The Defender sits between 2 segments within the SUV line up. On one side you have the luxury / performance SUV’s like the Cayenne, X5, and GLE – and the other more off road oriented with the 4Runner and Grand Cherokee. The only missing element is the sports driving performance you get from the Porsche and BMW. So there is a bit of a trade off depending on what you’re looking for. Personally my dream combo would be a Porsche Macan in one garage, and the Land Rover Defender 110 in the other – That would be awesome!
Here are the model breakdowns. You also get 3 engine choices with 4 Cylinder 296 HP, 0-60 in 7 Sec, 6 Cylinder 395 HP, 0-60 in 5.8 Sec, or V8 with an obscene 518 HP, 0-60 in just 5.1 Sec
Defender – $51,700 Starting
Defender X-Dynamic – $69,900 Starting
Defender X – $87,900 Starting
V8 Carpathian – $114,600 Starting
V8 – $107,700 Starting
I built what I would buy which is a Defender (S), 4 Cylinder with a couple upgrades which took me to $59,000 – This is just about the same as a BMW X4 similarly equipped.
Visit the Land Rover Website to Build Your Version