The Works V8 is one of the biggest surprises of the year, and the perfect way to celebrate Land Rover’s 70th anniversary.
These are not new cars by the way, as the automaker has ceased production of the legendary Defender. Instead, Land Rover sourced low-mileage, later Defenders to perform the impressive conversion.
Under the familiar boxy shape now lives Jaguar’s 5.0-liter V8 engine paired to a ZF eight-speed automatic transmission. The end result is a Defender that’s now motivated by 405PS (399hp) and 515Nm (380lb-ft) of peak torque, which sounds really exciting and a little terrifying at the same time.
The 0-60 mph (0-96 km/h) sprint takes just 5.6 seconds, which is ridiculous performance for an obsolete design like the Defender, while top speed is limited to 106 mph (170 km/h). The chassis, although upgraded to its key points to cope with the extra oomph, still retains its solid axles, so you probably wouldn’t want to go faster.
It might not be a great performer in the traditional sense, but the Defender Works V8 is pure fun in so many other ways. Land Rover claims that even the refinement is vastly improved, making the Defender Works V8 a more complete package that you might have thought.
Only 150 examples will be made, and they are already sold out despite prices kicking off at an eye-watering £150,000 (around $209,000 in current exchange rates).
This makes the Defender Works V8 more expensive than a Mercedes-AMG G63. But it doesn’t matter because, as Carfection puts it, the last Defender was never intended to to be a rational purchase anyway.