Defender: REBIRTH OF AN ICON
NOBODY knows more about Defenders than Greg King. He started at Solihull in 1993 as a 16-year-old Land Rover-mad apprentice, having moved up from the family farm in Devon where he had been driving Land Rovers since childhood.
During his time at Land Rover Greg worked on the 50th anniversary 90, Storm Defender, Tempest (Disco 2), second-gen RR Sport, the Paul Smith Defender, 2 millionth Defender and Defender Autobiography. He then moved to start with JLR Classic on Land Rover Reborn and Defender Works V8.
“I had a Series IIA on the farm as a boy and, over the years, I’ve had at least 14 Series, Ninetys, a One Ten and Defenders (excluding company ones). I loved my job with a passion!” says Greg, who left Jaguar Land Rover in 2018.
SOME brands have been adopted into our everyday language and are so commonplace we hardly notice. “I’ll just Hoover up,” we’ll say, or “I’ll Google it…” And how many times have you heard another 4x4 referred to as a Land Rover, even when it isn’t?
Land Rover has long been aware of the importance of its brand, but back in the late 1980s it faced an issue. Project Jay was being readied for production and a clear naming strategy was needed for
