The revamped Land Rover Defender has been an undoubted sales hit, despite coming to the market a decade late and looking like a cartoon drawing of an off-road vehicle.
Currently, Land Rover sells the 90 (2-door version) and the 110 (4-door version). You see quite a few more 110s, owing to the fact that four doors (and an optional third row seat for the anorexic).
To capitalize on its success, Land Rover is releasing an even larger version, so children with rickets can fit in the third row too.
This XXL version of the Defender will allegedly be called the Defender 130 (imaginative!), bilking stupid people out of $100k or whatever the monthly lease equivalent is.
The one (one!) exciting thing about this new Defender is they’ll finally release it with a full-throated V8 instead of an anemic inline-4 or inline-6.
Within the same brand portfolio – the new Range Rover does have a third-row option for the first time as well as a V8.
So who exactly is the new Defender for?
For a brand that used to have three models at most, Land Rover now has three “Families”: (starting prices included)
“The Range Rover Family”:
The Evoque (used to be 2 and 4 door, now just 4 door) ($46k)
The Velar ($60k)
The Range Rover Sport ($70k)
The Range Rover ($104k)
Then under the “Discovery Family”:
The Discovery Sport ($44k)
The Discovery ($56k)
And under the “Defender Family”:
The Defender 90 ($54k)
The Defender 110 ($53k) (the larger one is cheaper?!)
Counting different models by numbers of doors, Land Rover offers eight different models.
Of those eight models, five of them hover around the same price point.
What’s the point of any of the Discovery models when you have the Evoque and Velar?
What purpose does the Velar serve when the Range Rover Sport costs slightly more and is better equipped?
Sales may be up across the board, but Land Rover is cannibalizing their own models by offering too many.
Audi and Mercedes have been guilty of this as of late and even they’re learning to trim down. Now that domestic car manufacturers, who were notorious for releasing cars at every possible price point, have trimmed back to as few sedans as possible, perhaps international car brands will take the hint.