New Defender gets street and bush cred nod

Driving around in the new Land Rover Defender is like riding around on a rainbow with a large pot of gold at the end.

There are endless discoveries to be made, mostly inside the vehicle.

Purists like to refer to this vehicle as only being for off-road and long-distance trips – an adventure car for the “Great Unexplored”. That’s what its predecessor was.

Yet, does that myth apply to the new Defender? That was my job to find out.

And let me say: Myth Busted. It isn’t as visually sexy as other Land Rovers (read Range Rovers mainly).

It’s boxy and looks ready to go to work and rugged. The manufactures have maintained that rough appeal, that loyalists to the Defender brand would possibly look for.

My first task was to see if it had the street cred to match its bush cred.

That took less than an hour to confirm this after getting stopped by Metro police for no reason other than that they clearly wanted to drool.

An officer strolled around it, seemingly checking out every corner.

Feeling my irritation rise, I inquired what the issue was and he told me he’d never seen one and figured this was the only opportunity.

Nice job if you can get it: checking out iconic cars while unlicensed drivers speed by…

However, the brush with the law showed the Defender will pique curiosity.

That’s because it’s different and there’s nothing like it on the road currently.

The interior feels and looks like a completely different car than you’d expect from the utilitarian outside. It’s luxurious, from the comfortably soft semi-powered seats that have warmers and coolers, to the technologically advanced infotainment and comfort elements that make you forget this is a car built for toughness.

There’s a leather-wrapped steering wheel. Steering wheel texture is important when you do plenty of long-distance road trips and this is spot on.

A feature I loved was the dual climate control and the ability to stabilise and lock it for back-seat passengers. That stops children from fiddling and shows some thought has gone into the design.

One area where the Defender is bang up to date is with electronic devices. It has a range of different charging and link options via the newest C-type USB ports, as well as the more traditional, earlier-spec USBs.

There’s a slot for linking Apple iPads on the back of the front seats – also, I imagine, for charging the devices.

A favourite was the numerous ways to connect to the media infotainment. The 10-inch touch screen connection can take a bit of time, but once it’s up and running, it becomes automatic when the driver enters the vehicle.

The system allows the driver to connect in various ways: one using apps such as the Android or Apple car play app; two if you plug in your phone’s USB cable or three, the built-in system that comes with the car. All while still charging.

I kept discovering ports, it became like a game of finding the Easter egg.

Another enjoyable feature is being able to improve your fuel consumption through a feature that tells you how much you’re consuming, as well as your speed, and which keeps you on track to fuel-saving heaven. Of course, you get a trophy if you drive well and bragging rights.

My editor, Brendan Seery handed the car over to me and I noticed he had secured a driver’s “trophy” for his light-footedness, despite having done some serious off-roading.

I, on the other hand, got absolutely nothing from the fuel saving genie.

Probably sexism in the LR software…

Mind you, I did soon find myself monitoring my driving to try to match Brendan…

I’m big on sound and tend to be loud when alone in a car, so I checked out the top-end Meridian sound system, which, even when set to low volume, still seems to exclude extraneous sounds – although to be fair, the Defender is a very quiet vehicle.

Another neat trick is the navigation system, which uses the onboard Wi-Fi hotspot, to include live over-the-air radio updates on traffic that can be constantly updated when and if needed.

For once I can say sitting in traffic was a dream. Parking, surprisingly, was quite easy.

The Defender’s allround cameras and radar alerts took the stress out of the most stressful part of the urban trial, getting in and out of malls.

So, can a Land Rover Defender work as a daily city car? Most definitely – no questions asked.

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