Land Rover has confirmed reports that it will stop making the Defender SUV, built since 1948 with little changes. “The Defender will go out of production by the middle of the decade due to legislative reasons,” a Land Rover spokesman told Autonews Europe.
The legislative reasons may have something to do with safety and CO2 emissions, but the spokesman declined to comment. The Defender will be succeeded by an all-new vehicle, but details about it are scarce and its name is yet unknown. Land Rover doesn’t say when the replacement model will go on sale, but analysts at Bernstein Research believe it won’t go on sale earlier than 2019.
Why so late? Because of the “lack of volume and weak business case”, according to Bernstein analyst Max Warburton. The successor to the Land Rover Defender was widely expected to be influenced by the DC100 concept, shown in 2011 at the Frankfurt Motor Show.
However, Warburton says that the steel-based vehicle has been cancelled and the brand is now looking at the possibility of a more expensive aluminum vehicle that would use the current Range Rover platform. That vehicle may even break the tradition and be built in India.
Since its launch in 1948, the Defender racked up 2 million sales and helped establish Land Rover’s reputation as an off-road vehicle specialist. However, current sales are small, with only 561 Defenders delivered in Europe in the first eight months of this year.
By Dan Mihalascu
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