A NEW AGE OF DEFENDER
TO add some perspective to Land Rover’s ambitious foray into Namibia with its all-new Defender, you have to briefly travel back in time to the ’80s.
At the time, American motorcycle company Harley-Davidson was in some bother. Cutting costs in the manufacturing processes had resulted in bikes that resembled a 20-year-old supermarket shopping trolley, held together only by the grace of some second-hand bloudraad. So not top-quality then.
Sales, not surprisingly, slowed. Worryingly, especially if you were a Harley executive, was the fact that the notorious Hell’s Angels biker’s club had a Harley-only policy. So no Japanese bikes or other American brands; if you were a Hell’s Angel, you had to ride a Harley.
Then a new management team took over in Milwaukee and those vital quality issues were attended to. Harley-Davidson’s marketing department came up with a cunning advertisement campaign: a photo of a new Harley model with improved quality, and some unsavoury-looking biker gang types (read Hell’s Angels) posing with it, with the pay-off line: “Would you sell a bike of inferior quality to this lot? We wouldn’t.”
It was pretty darn audacious, but it worked. Sales picked up and no Harley executives joined Jimmy Hoffa on the missing persons list.
You can half imagine a similar campaign for the new Defender, pictured in the bush, surrounded with a selection of Land Rover faithful. With a set of high-end binoculars around the neck, the latest K-Way wear, rounded off with a pair of Merrell’s finest outdoorsy shoes.
The Defender faithful are a loyal lot, passionate about the vehicle they consider an absolute icon. But if they thought the new Defender was designed primarily to appease them and cater for all their needs, they’d be mistaken.
The motoring world looks vastly different in 2020 than it did in 1948, 1978 and in 2008. Land Rover had to create a vehicle that would not only appeal to a broad range of clientele, but also conform to stringent emissions regulations so it could go on sale in lucrative markets like the US.
It had to have global appeal and conform to global safety standards. Yet, it still clearly had to appease the Defender partisans, too.
Which brings us to Namibia. In an age where many car manufacturers choose to pay a clutter of social media influencers to post images of themselves draped over a bonnet of a car, or behind the wheel with a glass of champagne, conveying only good news, Land Rover went in a completely different direction.
An extremely brave direction,
