Land Rover unveiled not one, but two variants of the new Defender DC100 Concept.
First there’s the regular Defender you have seen before, and then its pickup version called the Sport. The Land Rover DC100 and DC100 Sport concepts preview a potential future direction for Land Rover.
Land Rover says they have considered four key elements in designing this cars to make sure they stay loyal to the traditional forms of the Defender that have made it a well-loved and world-famous car for the past sixty years. They wanted to preserve the traditions, but with a different tonality to cope with the demands of the modern world:
- Functionality – a fresh approach demonstrated through the harmony of design and capability, as well as modularity and clever features such as flexible seating and novel stowage solutions.
- Sustainability – with the use of lightweight and recycled materials and also a long-life ethos that ensures engineering as well as design longevity.
- Premium Durability – achieved through attention to detail, ‘fit for purpose’ design solutions, material choices and engineering integrity.
- Desirability – born out of the knowledge that these vehicles will deliver an ownership experience beyond all your expectations.
The interior of these cars are also designed with those principals in mind, and to add simplicity and functionality through a cool and refreshing design.
As a very nice touch, the DC100 concepts have a central instrument binnacle mounted above the gear lever. Combining the informatics functions of an instrument panel with an intuitive touchscreen interface, the unit is backed by powerful telematics technology that co-ordinates the ground-breaking technologies to be found in these concepts.
These cars aren’t due for produciton until 2015. So JLR is going to take its sweet time coming up with great powertrains for them. But the focus will be on less fuel consumption and emissions rather than performance. That said, they won’t let the Defender’s off-road capabilities suffer because of that.
