Land Rover Defender offers luxury in a traditional package

Published 3:30 pm Thursday, March 20, 2025

The Land Rover Defender, now in its fifth year of production, is an upscale SUV with an excellent performance and luxury package. Maybe it’s my personal preference for minimalist four-wheel drive vehicles, but I’ve never quite figured out what Land Rover is doing with the Defender.

The quandary is that Land Rover has a great lineup of vehicles under the Land Rover Discovery brand, and then it has the very upscale Range Rover brand, and it has the Defender as well. It used to be that the three Land Rover sub-brands were quite distinct. The Defender harked back to the original Land Rovers with steel floors, removable shell tops, and the kind of minimalist go-anywhere and then hose it out later ruggedness I like. The Discovery series and its predecessors were nice, but not as luxurious or expensive as the Range Rover.

But now every last one of these SUVs is a capable off-road machine, they’re all luxurious, and they overlap in pricing. You can get any entry-level Rover for $48,900 to $56,900 and the top prices go up to the range of $100,000. That makes it hard to categorize which Rover any given person might want. On the other hand, there’s a lovely menu to choose from when you consider the Land Rover brand as a whole.

The Defender is a little more rugged looking than other Land Rover products, and it sits a little higher off the ground. The Defender keeps to the two-box design and square corners of its past, but once you get inside, it’s every bit as luxurious as any other SUV on the market. I’ve been on enough Land Rover drives to know that even the sporty compact Range Rover Evoque is capable off-road, but the Defender really looks the part. The optional Air Suspension Pack ($1,600) and the Off-Road Pack ($1,550) help with the raised-up and terrain-ready appearance.

Under the hood, the Rover products all use the same range of engines. The Defender comes in three wheelbase lengths, 90, 110, and 130 inches, respectively. The 90 is a two-door model, while the bigger Defenders have four doors. You can get the Defender 110 with Land Rover’s 2.0-liter turbocharged four-cylinder, the inline 6-cylinder with mild hybrid, or the 5.0-liter V8. I’ve driven all three and there’s plenty of engine power from each of these, but I think the 6-cylinder hits the sweet spot of power and fuel economy. The Defender comes with an 8-speed automatic transmission with dual-range all-wheel drive, so you have low range gears for serious off-road usage.

Inside, as I mentioned, the Defender is as nice as any Rover product, with the notation that it’s got a more Spartan look than the Range Rovers. But you still get lovely leather seats, heated and cooled, and a heated leather steering wheel. There’s a 10-inch touchscreen on the dash for your infotainment, a Meridian sound system, and all the tech you could possibly want.

On the road, the Defender 110 feels like a pretty big SUV, which it is. Our test rig had the Off-Road Pack and Air Suspension, so it was really not optimized for pavement. Those packages include off-road tires, but the Defender is perfectly civilized. If you want to take corners faster, I recommend choosing a Discovery Sport, Range Rover Evoque, or even one of the sister SUVs produced by Jaguar. But for around-town driving, the Defender is comfortable and easy to use. If you need to tow, you get an impressive 8,201-pound tow rating when using a trailer with its own brakes.

The pricing on the Defender 110 starts at $72,000 for the X-Dynamic SE trim, which includes the hybrid 6-cylinder engine and most of the luxury appointments. That’s competitive with other European and premium brand SUVs. There really are no bad choices with Land Rover – you just get to decide if you want the rugged or refined look in your driveway.

2025 Defender 110 X-Dynamic SE

Base price: $72,000

Price as tested: $81,923

Type: Mid-size SUV

Engine: 3.0-liter mild hybrid 6-cylinder (395 hp, 406 lbs-ft)

Transmission: 8-speed automatic

EPA estimated mileage: 17/20

Overall length: 197.5 inches

Curb weight: 5,035 pounds

Final assembly: Nitra, Slovakia