Defender Pretenders
ROWING UP ON A FARM IN North Yorkshire, I got used to mud. Mud, along with oily puddles, old fence posts, barbed wire and baler twine, stacks of bald tyres, blue plastic fertilizer bags, a tractor that hadn’t started in a decade, and a filthy farm dog that slept in the shed. Basically, all the stuff “Countryfile” doesn’t show you on Sunday-night telly.
It’s in this environment that a tatty old Land Rover 110 looks perfectly at home, covered in cow muck, the grey fabric interior turned a pale pastel beige by the caked dirt. Farmyards were the birthplace of the modern 4x4. But then, like amphibians crawling out of the primordial sludge, off-roaders left behind the muddy farms and evolved to live on the school run, becoming SUVs, crossovers, softroaders, and the Lamborghini Urus. Technically still 4x4s, yes, but without the smell of sheep dip and red diesel.
This has been a trend for the last 40 years, but that doesn’t mean all off-roaders have now gone soft. Just as there are still amphibians out there, living in ponds, stubbornly refusing to become mammals, so, too, there are still proper off-roaders — boxy and heavy and capable of towing a JCB out of a swamp if required. In a world full of front-drive RAV4s and CR-Vs, that clarity of purpose is admirable.
And that’s why, if you’re a fan of
