Many companies these days are doing many wonderful things with the Land Rover Defender. That has apparently made Land Rover themselves jealous, because, well, they want a piece of the pie. It is their cool car that enables all those tuner to do the wonderful things in the first place.

So LR has had a go at customizing and upgrading a Land Rover Defender 90 in collaboration with British designer Sir Paul Smith who worked closely with Land Rover’s Special Vehicle Operations (SVO) design team to create a truly unique Defender. Unique it sure is, but to be frank this car is a typical designer nonsense. A guy with no clue about what makes a car cool is given an opportunity to style an iconic model. And he invariably ends up ruining it.

Smith’s one-off Land Rover Defender features 27 different colours used on the exterior panels. This theme is apparently inspired by the British countryside. For the interior Sir Paul has gone for a bespoke look with black leather contrasts against blue stitching and lots of hidden details.

“This is a complete one-off; I wanted to give this Defender a feeling of luxury, so I used a mix of leather and fabric for the seats. I actually used the fabric that I design for Maharam, the American upholstery company. The vehicle features lots of special Paul Smith touches.”

It is probably best Land Rover sticks to just building the Defender and let the tuners handle the job of customizing them.