Gallery: A look back at the Land Rover Defender
The Land Rover Defender is no more. Production of the iconic off-roader, which has been on sale since 1948 in one form or another, has ended after facing escalating safety regulations and a changing market place. Land Rover has confirmed that it will be replaced.
The Land Rover Defender is identified with the UK in much the same way as the K6 telephone box, black London taxis and the Mini. It's also loved by HRH The Queen. Okay, so the number of parts shared between the Land Rover of 1948 and the Defender of today are miniscule, but it's still fundamentally the same vehicle. And to show you just how much it hasn't changed, here's a gallery of each major model through the years.
Land Rover Series III V8 (1979)
The Land Rover finally received a detuned low-compression version of the Range Rover's V8 engine. Aftermarket tuners had been doing this for a while, and then Land Rover offered it as a option for export-market models in the mid-1970s. Power was down to less than 100bhp, but torque was still as healthy as ever and, most importantly, all of that additional grunt really helped cement the Land Rover's position as the world's best off-roader vehicle.
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