Once in the while, the automotive community gets a welcome kick receiving and subsequently circulating rumours about a new vehicle leaked from the drawing board. Is it the newest Ferrari? A Porsche? A Benz? Or a new FI engine? No, it’s a Defender – the new Land Rover Defender slated to appear in 2014.

That’s a good 4 years from now and yet we are getting a lot of speculations about it this early. The Tata-owned Jaguar Land Rover marque of SUVs is gearing up to launch a hybrid SUV positioned as a replacement and successor to the landmark Land Rover Defender for which the word iconic would have invented.

The 62-year old strike-anywhere-carry-anything 4X4 all-terrain sub-urban-but-city-driving vehicle might by now be undergoing all the engineering tweaks in time for its 2014 unveiling under the code-name Project Icon. What a fitting name.

Project Icon

The rumour seems too early to get around. There just doesn’t seem to be much information about the forthcoming Defender other than its project name and the speculations about its hybrid nature. But we can add up a few developments, both rumoured and factual that just might point to the inevitable new Land Rover Defender sooner or later.

* The Defender brand was slapped on the now legendary Land Rover in 1990 to kick start a naming convention and distinguish it from the company’s new Land Rover Discovery series. The Defender styling as it is today is already 25 years old but is actually a direct styling descendant of the first post war Land Rover of 1948. Admittedly, new production and assembly methods have made the Defender line profitable to build starting in the 90s, which postponed its replacement. But the time is right for a new Defender.
* In what seems like a corporate move similar to badgering Papa for extra dough, the Land Rover Company had gotten approval from Tata Motors for additional funding to design and engineer the next generation Defender line up
* The current Defender platform is just too heavy and won’t be able to face the stringent new EU efficiency and carbon emission standards. It also does not satisfy the safety requirements of Uncle Sam.
* Its powertrain is expected to be the biggest differentiating element with hybrid features. But we can only guess based on the past hybrid designs like the Electronic Rear Axle Drive used in the Freelander hybrid model. It had a 22-volt motor delivering 34-47hp and 147 ft-lb torque to drive the rear wheels and could drive the front as well when needed.

Awaiting the Announcement

In the meantime, while awaiting official announcement of the new Defender, the world will have to feast on the Defender 90 and 110 models pf 2010-2011 model year as well as its earlier 60th anniversary variant released in 2008. The 90 is the shorter 3-door model while the 110 is the full sizes 5-door SUV.

You can get any of the wannabee rivals like the Toyota Land Cruiser LC3 for 29,000, or the Nissan Pathfinder 2.5 Accenta for roughly 26,900 and the Mitsubishi Shogun 3.2 Equippe for 27,500. But when you’re talking about a legend like the Land Rover Defender 110, you have a pedigreed SUV none of them can touch. It’s even the cheapest option at 25,500. GP

The automotive community sometimes gets a kick from rumours about new cars and related industry developments even in their early stages in the drawing boards of big name car makers. One of them comes from the Tata-owned Land Rover SUVs.

The British-pedigreed road marque Land Rover is said to be working on a new sport utility vehicle (SUV) that will eventually supercede its iconic Defender. In a move akin to badgering Dad for an extra pocket money, the Jaguar Land Rover Company had asked owners Tata Motors for additional operational budget to design, develop and engineer what is presumably the next generation Defender successor. Though, admittedly, it is quite unlikely that the new SUV will carry the same name.

The new post-Defender SUV is expected to be launched sometime in 2014, quite a long stretch of time from now but nonetheless an interesting bit of automotive news similar to the excitement and anticipation generated with those rumors about new Lemans and F1 cars still on the drawing board, not to mention Ferrari supercars being spied at their Maranello test tracks.

There’s little doubt the new off-road all-terrain 4X4 sport utility vehicle will get to wear some of the Defender’s hallmark styling and the Land Rover’s heritage lines but it will generally gravitate towards being a radically more sophisticated departure from the current workhorse.

It might even be a hybrid of sorts to latch on the ever so popular eco-friendly trend among modern road vehicles with increasingly less CO2 emissions. By that time, we expect to see more hybrid or even full electric road vehicles so we won’t be surprised a bit to see the post-Defender SUV carry an electric rear axle drive with a more fuel efficient engine for dual powering system as well as a body made of aerospace-grade composite synthetic materials lighter and stronger than anything we’ve come to see on the Land Rover or Range Rover line of SUVs.

Anything and everything can still happen between now and 2014. A rather long three-year gap can still lead to some new Defender variants coming out of the assembly line with possibly improved engines with slightly better performance, body styling, more accessories, wheel options and body materials.

Though we won’t expect them to be any more dramatic than the usual cosmetic upgrades common in what we see getting into new variants every model year. Sticker prices are likewise not going to get any cheaper.

With the new cash coming into the Jaguar Land Rover treasure from fresh R&D capital as well as seeing an upsurge in domestic and international sales getting into its coffers starting with February’s nearly 60% increase in sales receipts, we hope to see more exciting times ahead for the Rover product line-up. Its markets are sure to benefit from it, and the press would be more than happy to write oodles of praise about it, or criticisms.