Jaguar Land Rover phased out the iconic Defender recently and as the world waits for the British marque to reveal the next-generation model, there have been various digitally imagined renderings, such as the one above by carwow.co.uk.
No difinitive design details have been made available but Gerry McGovern, Land Rover’s chief design officer has – in an interview with journalists from Automotive News, at a Range rover Velar launch – dropped some hints as to what can be expected from the new Defender’s design.
“McGovern describes Land Rover as having three members: Range Rover, Discovery and Defender. He lists the traits that each must have to be true to its original mission and to succeed today. For the Defender, these boxes are ticked: design leadership, durability and engineering integrity. There’s also a sketch of the Defender’s silhouette shown on a flat-screen TV that shows the vehicle with a flat roof and squared-off front end, like the original version.”
It’s expected that the new Defender will debut late next year or in early 2019, however McGovern warns people not to expect it to be a clone of the original, saying:”I am a modernist. I’m looking forward, not back.”
McGovern also said that there will be a family of Defenders, which we suspect will include a short-wheel base, long-wheel base and possibly an open topped version. The company has already stated that the new model will drop the body-on-frame chassis for a unibody construction.
McGovern didn’t say more than that, however Automotive News journalists expect that in classic McGovern style, the new vehicle’s headlights will likely be round like the originals, but with interesting lighting, such as LEDs and the taillights will be modern, but similar in shape to that of the previous model.