Land Rover Defender revie
However, few of those rivals possess the sheer character and desirability of the Land Rover Defender.
Key specsFuel typePetrol, diesel, plug-in hybridBody styleSUVPowertrain2.0-litre four-cylinder PHEV petrol, four-wheel drive
3.0-litre six-cylinder MHEV diesel, four-wheel drive
5.0-litre V8 petrol, four-wheel driveSafety5-stars Euro NCAP, 2020Warranty3yrs unlimited mileage
How much does the Land Rover Defender cost?
The old Land Rover Defender was characterised as a tough, no-nonsense off-road vehicle that would feel at home on a farm, the savanna or even a battlefield. For that you get 22-inch wheels, electric air suspension and a digital rear view mirror.
Land Rover sought to fix an issue that many Defender buyers faced in 2025 in regards to wheel choices. This model is available on the 90 from around £114,000, and comes with quad-exhaust tips, tinted windows, a bespoke terrain response system and V8 badging.
All Defenders use the same eight-speed auto transmission, plus four-wheel drive and a version of Land Rover’s Terrain Response system with a number of preset driving modes to help you negotiate different types of off-road driving terrain. The latter includes various driving modes that automatically adjust various driving parameters to make it a doddle to drive across whatever terrain you point it at.
All this off-road ability doesn’t come at the expense of on-road civility, however. There’s a big steering wheel that requires frequent input, and the transmission can be laboured. There’s a bit of lean during tight cornering and even the three-door 90 feels big in urban areas. V8 models obviously have straight-line performance and an accompanying soundtrack to excite, but they still feel utilitarian. This means that when pushed through corners at speed, the Defender will lean more than a BMW X5 would. We’ve found that its softer suspension also pays off in terms of ride comfort, because the Defender on smaller wheels is remarkably supple even over rough sections of Tarmac.
0-62mph acceleration and top speed
A base-level Defender 90 D250 will sprint from 0-60mph in a reasonably brisk 7.6 seconds, before topping out at 117mph. That’s quite an expensive way of fuelling the Defender, so most will do it via a 7kW wallbox charger at home using cheaper overnight electricity. However, when we lived with an older-specification P400e over nearly 13,000 miles, we averaged only 30mpg, which is close to what you’d expect from a diesel Defender – and that’s much cheaper to buy in the first place.
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Company car drivers paying Benefit-in-Kind BiK tax may be tempted by its low average emissions of 61g km. However, many alternatives, such as the BMW X5 xDrive50e, are in a much lower eight per cent band at least until 2025. Then there is the all-electric seven-seat Kia EV9 to consider, offering much more space inside than a Defender, but costing even less per month. If youre looking for pure-electric power however, then it might be worth waiting for the upcoming Defender Sport – which weve already spotted testing ahead of a launch next year.
Model Battery sizeRangeInsurance groupLand Rover Defender P300e19.2kWh27 miles41E
Tax
Every Defender is subject to premium road tax applied to vehicles costing over £40,000, so while hybrid drive knocks £10 off the annual charge, it’s still an expensive car for Vehicle Excise Duty VED. Our latest expert data suggests that the Defender 90 retains between 53 to 67 per cent of its value over a typical three-year 36,000-mile ownership period. While it’s not the usual Land Rover level of luxury, it brings a unique utilitarian look to the cabin that’s very cool, yet it feels just as well screwed together as anything else on sale, and has enough soft-touch materials in all the right places to maintain a premium ambience.
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Standard equipment for the S trim includes 19-inch alloy wheels, LED headlights, heated seats, wireless smartphone charging and power-folding door mirrors. Land Rover could have made too many cheesy nods to the old car, or festooned it with a bewildering amount of futuristic technology. The system allows for over-the-air software updates, which is something we found particularly useful when we ran a Defender 110 P400e, saving us from having to take a trip to the dealer. There are also clever touches to help you with towing, with the on-board cameras assisting you in lining up a trailer, while the air suspension can raise and lower to make hitching up easier.
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The ClearSight system is another handy addition for Defender drivers and comes with Mirror or Ground functions. If you need to carry longer items, dropping the rear seats in the Defener 90 gives you 1,263 litres to play with.
The Defender 110 offers a more generous amount of boot space, which should be enough for most families. We think that’ll be helpful for those who struggle with this task.
Reliability & safety
From just looking at the Land Rover Defender, you’d think its chunky and robust design would mean it is virtually unbreakable. Owners’ feedback about the brand is showing signs of improvement, too, with Land Rover moving up from 22nd position out of 29 brands in 2021 to 14th spot in 2022 and 2023, then rising again into tenth spot in 2024.
The Defender comes with a host of safety kit and active systems designed to help avoid a collision, and Euro NCAP was sufficiently impressed to award the model a full five-star rating.
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Standard equipment includes adaptive cruise control to keep you a safe distance from the vehicle ahead, and a Lane Keep Assist system to keep you within your lane on the motorway. In town, there’s Auto Emergency Braking to mitigate or avoid low-speed collisions with other vehicles and road users, along with a Traffic Sign Recognition to warn you of speed limit changes. An alert will be sent within minutes if your car is stolen with non-authorised keys.
Key standard safety featuresEuro NCAP safety ratings
Lane Keep Assist
Automatic Emergency Braking
Adaptive Cruise Control
5-star Euro NCAP, 2020
Adult occupant protection – 85%
Child occupant protection – 85%
Vulnerable road user protection – 71%
Safety assist – 79%
Warranty
Land Rover offers a three-year unlimited mileage warranty, with the option to extend cover, at extra cost, for up to ten years and 100,000 miles. There’s also three years’ free roadside recovery.
Both of these are very similar to what you’ll find from BMW, but are quite a bit shorter than the up to 10 years or 100,000 miles of cover you can get with a Toyota or Lexus.
Servicing
Land Rover offers individual fixed-price Service Plans. The unlimited mileage is more generous than what most manufacturers offer, but there are still plenty of other brands that provide longer warranty periods, such as Toyota and Lexus, who provide up to 10 years or 100,000 miles of cover if you get your car serviced at a main dealer.
