Yahoo Autos Land Rover Defender 130 2024 long-term test
Why we’re running it: Can an extra-long, diesel 4x4 justify a place in daily motoring life in 2024?
Month 1 - Specs
Gary and his laptop go places that an over-the-air update simply can’t - 14 August
A nice man arrives one morning after a few phone calls and an "I'm half an hour away" text to carry out what has variously been described as an 'update' and a 'recall' to the Land Rover Defender 130.
Most of its updates happen over the air, but not this one, which requires plugging in a diagnostic laptop to a 16-pin socket in the driver's footwell, because it's a security update. It disables the 'can bus' when the car is locked, to make it harder to steal.
Gary says theft isn't a Land Rover-specific problem but is an issue for all premium car makers, so updates/recalls/whatever like this are just part of the game of cat and mouse with increasingly sophisticated criminals.
I wondered if a lot of pinched cars end up in Russia, given sanctions mean they can't officially be sold there (though some unscrupulous neighbouring countries are experiencing a curiously unexpected sales volume boost), but I'm told the UAE is a more typical end point.
The job of reinforcing this Defender starts at 0825hr and is all done by 0835hr, after a couple of checks that the windows still work; the update occasionally upsets a few supplementary systems, necessitating a second reboot, but all is well here.
While the work's being done, I'm also advised not to use a Land Rover Remote app - which I had to download as part of the insurance requirements - to lock the car if I've inadvertently left the keys inside it (if, say, I remember while standing in line at a filling station).
The app won't then unlock it, and my keys will be inside, which is suboptimal. Duly noted. Anyway, 10 minutes after Gary arrives, he's on his way again and the Defender feels no different to me but is more secure. Happy days.
I thought I might have to wait longer so I've been clearing and tidying the car up while the update has been happening.
A colleague might need to use it without much notice, and handing over a filthy car to somebody important is seldom advisable. And yet the Outbound spec is a rufty-tufty lifestyley variant so I've been trying to use it like one as much as possible and have a boot sullied by hay and horse feed.
So I pull the brushable, hoseable, rubber mat onto the floor and set about it. It has a small flap too, which can have a dual purpose of protecting the bumper if you're loading a potentially scratchy object into the boot or, more likely, protecting you from grime on the bumper if you're sitting on the boot lip to change your wellies. The front and rear footwells have similarly utilitarian mats.
Incidentally, inside the boot lip is a button that can lower or raise the cars ride height while stationary to boot floor, which is good if the boot is full, and there's also a storage cubby in the door that would be handy for hi-vis vests, or cleaning kit, gloves, dog leads, whatever.
JLR may well think of itself as a luxury design house these days, but credit to the designers and engineers who still think of utility things like this in a car like this. It's an expensive wagon, certainly, but still an exceptionally useful one.
I've yet to tow anything with this Defender - there's an electrically deploying towbar and you have no idea at all that it's there when it's stowed - but having pulled stuff with them before, I know they are terrific at it. I'll have to think of a reason to try it.
Meantime, I get back into the tidied, and now apparently more secure, driver's seat of one of the most practical and easygoing cars on the market, and have it melt into my life as easily as it ever does.
Love it
Utility belter
So many cubbies and pockets that none of my car cleaning gear rattles around the cabin.
Loathe it
Knee-jerk questions
People asking me if it has broken (no) or been nicked (obviously not).
Mileage: 10,700
Life with a Land Rover Defender 130: Month 2
Economy is more impressive than you might think - 31 July
I did it. Not for long, and it took motorway cruising at a leisurely pace and treating the throttle like there was a hamster loose in the footwell, but still, I did it: averaging 52mpg for more than 50 miles, between Bracknell and Bicester. You can’t keep it up once junctions arrive but, still, I’m impressed.
Mileage: 10,017
Accurate tyre readouts are handy - 17 July
The tyre pressure monitor threw up a warning and has incredibly accurate readouts for the current pressure, plus recommended settings. All tyres were slightly under recommended, presumably deliberately set that way, with the rear right flagging lower still. I pumped them all to their recommended setting and they have all stayed that way since.
Mileage: 10,479
Our go-anywhere, do-anything 4x4 is finally taken out of its comfort zone. Or is it? - 10 July
Matt Prior texts me a couple of hours after I tried to call him. "I missed you. You’ll want something,” he says. Offended by his unwarranted(ish) cynicism, I reply that I only wanted to offer him a week or two in my Abarth 500e, because I know how much of a fan of small cars he is. “When do you need the Defender?” comes the blunt reply.
Ah, now there’s a thought. I had completely forgotten you were running the van-backed 130, Matt, but now you mention it, I do have two sofas, some desks and a chest of drawers that need collecting. Oh, and I’ve got a couple of long weekends on the road coming up where a punchy yet frugal diesel straight six would be most useful…
Funny how things work out.
And so it is, with a luminescent electric city car and a slightly miffed editor-at-large shrinking in the 130’s colossal mirrors a couple of days later, that I come to reacquaint myself with one of the largest cars currently available in the UK.
I first drove a mega-Defender last year, on a mix of wide, sweeping B-roads and tough but spacious off-road trails – both environments where the 130 can relax into some personal space and it’s quite easy to forget about the extra 340mm of metal that it carries over the already colossal 110.
I don’t live halfway up Ben Nevis, though, so now I’ll be able to try taking the 130 well and truly out of its comfort zone with a few long motorway schleps, a fortnight of Ikea runs, tip trips and commuting through the tight, twisting, traffic-choked veins of suburban London.
In fact, I’m not sure I haven’t found this car’s limit. I was expecting to achieve 16mpg and get stuck at every T-junction. Instead, it consumes about as much as I would expect of a Volkswagen Golf GTI over 400 miles and proves itself as manoeuvrable as your average estate car (with a bit of practice and a lot of help from the parking aids).
It’s whisper-quiet at motorway speeds and hassle-free in city traffic; it sneaks under every height restrictor and comfortably accommodates untold quantities of flat-pack flotsam; it reverses down my tight cul-de-sac and slots into the tiny space outside my house (while blocking all natural light to my living room); and it saves me hundreds of pounds in moving costs by doubling up as a mid-sized van.
Our 130’s particularly sinister specification does nothing to ease the glares and tuts that such large and darkened vehicles attract in urban areas. And yet, even when I fire up the grumbly diesel, even when I remind its detractors that the alternative is a screaming supercharged petrol V8.
But if you can stomach the quite obvious dissent from some quarters and you’re especially careful not to inadvertently run over any Smart cars (or supermarkets) on the commute, it really is a surprisingly docile and malleable beast.
Rear-wheel steering would make it easier to parallel park and negotiate helter-skelter multi-storey ramps, and I wouldn’t mind some meatier rubber to protect the 20in alloys from kerb rash, but ultimately I can’t help but wonder at this 4x4 behemoth’s almost inconceivable duality.
Something so brash and brawny has no right to be so easy to live with in town, but then maybe that’s why every third car inside the M25 seems to be a Defender: they just work.
It’s not the politically correct choice of runaround for anyone, except perhaps if you’re one of those hardy volunteers who look after small islands in the Outer Hebrides, but there’s no denying its fitness for multiple purposes.
Felix Page
Love it
Torque of the town
I'm down to driving just a handful of big diesels a year, and the creamy brute force of the D300 reminds me what a shame that is.
Loathe it
Back in full swing
The tailgate being side-hinged means you need to leave a big gap behind you when reverse parking, but the 130 already takes up every inch of a space.
Mileage: 10,030
Life with a Land Rover Defender 130: Month 1
Our XXL Defender is surprisingly economical - 16 June
Having said in the car’s introduction that 40mpg was in the offing and smarting from an acquaintance saying that he wouldn’t get in a car as consumptive as the Defender, I thought I’d see what it could do. This 44.8mpg was let down by some roadworks, so now I’m wondering if I can get 50mpg out of it. Probably not.
Mileage: 9992
Welcoming the Defender 130 to the fleet - 5 June 2024
No sooner had I written that the Ford Ranger Raptor had left Autocar's long-term fleet (to join Steve Cropley's personal fleet, and fair play to him), a similarly large vehicle has arrived to replace it.
It's a Land Rover Defender 130, the longest variant yet of JLR's most rugged 4x4, the car that represented the final peg of a "three-legged stool" when it was launched in 2020, alongside the Discovery and Range Rover. (And given there are multiples of Discovery and Range Rover, I still wonder if there's room for more than one Defender type.)
The 130 lives on the same 3022mm wheelbase as the Defender 110 but has had 340mm added behind the back axle, with a slight lower-body lift back there at the same time to reduce compromise to the car's departure angle.
The Defender was a pretty big car already, and now it's a really big one, at 5099mm long without a spare wheel and 5358mm long with it, as here. Like a 110 it can be optioned with a third row of seats, although in that form it can't also be specified with the jump seat in the front, because nine seats are too many for a passenger car.
The last time a Defender joined Autocar's long-term fleet, a very pleasant 90, I had the pleasure of working through the configurator and picking the choice options: steel wheels, blue paint, white root, chunky tyres.
It's one of life's simple pleasures (I can recommend the Indian motorcycle configurator as my current deadline dodging obsession). But then somebody else ended up running that Defender.
This time around, it's different: I'm looking after the car, but it arrived pre-specced. The 130 has come to us in Outbound trim, with a 3.0-litre six-cylinder twin-turbo mild-hybrid diesel making 296bhp.
(This D300 was registered a few months ago; now this trim comes with a minimum D350 diesel.) As you might expect, given the name, the Outbound is one of the more lifestyley variants of the Defender.
If you want to get deeply involved in the model range, it has the basic specification of an X-Dynamic SE but with added gloss black wheels, mats and extended rubber flooring inside, a body-coloured exterior panel and a powder-coated cross-car beam.
Crucially, the Outbound is avallable only with five seats, rather than eight, to prioritise load bay capacity over passenger carrying.
A 130 with all eight seats raised has 400 litres of room behind the third row. The volume on this five-seater is at least 1329 litres, rising to 2516 litres with the back seats folded. I haven't raised a six-a-side football team, so five seats suits me fine, as does the Outbound's easily cleanable rubber flooring, for when I fill the back with hay and the front with mud. Which, with due apologies to colleagues who will borrow the car from me, I will.
There are some options, of course, on top of a £80,390 base price when it was registered. The Defender in standard specification comes very well covered, but this car has a few packs and standalone options as well, most notably upgraded leather seats (£920), an upgrade for the interior (£2275), a towing pack (£1415), an electronic active rear differential (£1020) and more besides, including a tracker with a three-year subscription (£530).
The grey paint adds £1800 and the priciest option is the £4000 satin protective film over that, so that I look like an extra from a Guy Ritchie film. In all, £16,355's worth of kit takes the price to £96,745.
When the new Defender arrived, Commercial versions started at £35,000 but it was just about possible to spend £100,000 on a heavily optioned five-door. Now a Defender Hard Top is £57,420 and you can get pretty close to £140,000. JLR isn't alone here, though. Everything has quickly become more expensive.
Besides, the Defender has found its feet as a luxury car. And the most expensive ones now get a petrol V8. Goody gumdrops.
Anyway, back to this one: it's settling into my routine very easily. I will take it off road, or at least onto green lanes, but during its initial miles, I've been using it as a daily wagon.
I know it's big and tall and heavy, but it's such a good motorway car, with great visibility, big comfortable seats, a relaxed driving position and exceptional stability and isolation, even in bad conditions.
And sure, it's a 4x4, but ease off and relax and it can return 40mpg on a long cruise. Not many years ago, a 1.4-litre petrol supermini wouldn't have done that.
Like the Raptor that went before it, it's not the simplest thing to park, but I can be in a Suzuki Swift and I will still head to a quiet car park bay right at the end of a row and then scooch up against the wall or kerb, so it doesn't make much difference.
And there's a really good reversing camera that shows how much room the spare wheel requires, plus the space needed if you want to still open the rear door. There are lots of little niche features like that around the Defender. More on them in the weeks to come.
Second Opinion
We’ve all seen a lot of new Defenders, yet never one as well specced as the 90 we ran a few years ago (well done, Matt). It was memorable and is still missed; a bigger, more accessible boot was its only real weakness. The 130 takes a sledgehammer (or is that a shipping container?) to that problem, so I’m intrigued to see if it retains the 90’s charm.
Mark Tisshaw
Land Rover Defender 130 D300 Outbound specification
Specs: Price New £80,390 Price as tested £96,745 Options Satin film £4000, Premium Interior Pack £2275, paint £1800, Towing Pack £1415, Driver Assist Pack £1175, head-up display £1080, rear e-diff £1020, leather upgrade £920, Comfort and Convenience Pack £800, matrix headlights £760, tracker £530, Cold Climate Pack £260, laminated UVproof windscreen £220, domestic plug socket £100
Test Data: Engine 3.0-litre twin-turbocharged mild-hybrid diesel Power 296bhp at xxxrpm Torque xxxlb ft at xxxrpm Kerb weight xxxkg Top speed xxxmph 0-62mph 6.4sec Fuel economy 32.4mpg CO2 229g/km Faults None Expenses None
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