Goodbye Defender

Looks like it's becoming more of a reality.
http://www.autocar.co.uk/News/NewsArticle/Land-Rover-Defender/243591/

In other news, Tata is considering closing the Solihull plant by 2014. It's between Solihull and the Jaguar Castle Bromwich plant in the West Midlands, but they are planning to close one of them.

Interesting, that all dovetails in with info I got from an insider a few months ago. He's on powertrain, so body info is a bit limited. He suggests they'll continue with the current Ford Transit diesel. But confirmed much of the rest of it, spare capacity on the T5 chassis after the Disco/RRS go to an all-aluminum chassis in 2012 so it makes sense the Defender could move to the old T5 steel setup. Big question mark after 2014.

I'm not as much anti-new-technology as some people, but I can't understand how they would think that independent suspension is going to work for the Defender market.

Too bad, I really expected more from Tata.

I'll miss the solid axle. Why are they doing this?

I bet it's "last kick at the can". They don't want to build it past 2014, so they will make this thing, then when it fails declare "There is no market for the Defender anymore" and cancel the vehicle altogether. I'm guessing they plan to sell a Tata truck made in India for agricultural and 3rd world uses, and reserve the Land Rover brand for premium SUV's.

So at first I had to pay more here in the USA since there were only 500 legal ones...
Then began the ray of sunshine as the 25yr mark started to pass..
Now prices will go up again since there are to be no more.

A turbo diesel Defender with an auto trans is my dream machine, something I have always wanted and someday plan to own..it is just getting tough to figure out how.

R_Lefebvre said:

Too bad, I really expected more from Tata.

Click to expand...

I didn't really.
At least with Land Rover owned by the Brits there was some incentive to keep the solid axle ladder frame Defender, if for no other reason than the MoD. I'm sure Tata couldn't care less about the British Defense establishment.

Yeah, I guess. I was just thinking, how could things possibly get any worse? Maybe it'll turn around. Wishful thinking.

This, coupled with statements last week from the CEO of Fiat that he was surprised by how bad of shape Chrysler was in. Basically, they have NO product in the pipeline, at all. It takes 4 years to develop a car, and there is NOTHING that they are working on, except a new Jeep Cherokee. That's it. No cars, no other trucks, nothing. Says he didn't know that before they did their little merger deal.

Dude, seriously? Legions of internet car pundits knew that, how could you not figure that out while doing your due diligence? Jalopnik has been blogging about the empty pipeline at Chrysler for like a year.

And I don't even know if they COULD go and develop anything new anymore, because I think they "downsized" most of the remaining engineers. I know things were tragically funny when I was working with them in 05-06, and they let go of even more last year.

There are two problems with building the Defender.

One is legislative; it doesn't meet safety criteria in numerous places, so it misses out on some big markets, principally North America.

The second problem is cost of assembly. Unlike the other LR products, it is almost entirely hand built, and that costs LR a lot of money. Should Solihull close, Defender construction would probably move to India rather than the new factory, where labour costs would be minimal.

So, ultimately, the only threat to the continuation of the Defender is its limited marketability. However, with many nations clamouring for them for their emergency services, armed forces and utilities organisations, as well as private owners and businesses still having demand for the product, I can't see Defender disappearing any time soon - indeed, throughout this global recession, the only LR model to be selling strongly is Defender, for which demand has been outstripping supply.

Stories about the cessation of Defender production have been circulating for at least 15 years. I wouldn't give them any credence.

I'm curious about the "hand built" think I see tossed around a lot. Is that specifically referring to the body?

I've been in many assembly plants, and most cars are almost completely assembled by hand. The only assembly that is done robotically is the body welding.

Obviously most of tha parts are made by machines, but the assembly is mostly done manually. Very little is "hands off". So what is special about the Defender?

If it's just that the body is assembled by hand, why not make a solid frame, solid axle truck, and just go to roboticaly welded bodies? You don't need to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

I think "hand-built" is just another way of saying that the production line is very old-fashioned and inefficient, and the volumes don't justify modernising.

If Tata build a new "Defender" based on a LR3 frame, I believe it will fall between two stools, suiting neither the true utility market, nor the recreational market.

Snagger said:

Stories about the cessation of Defender production have been circulating for at least 15 years. I wouldn't give them any credence.

Click to expand...

I didn't mean the literal end of the Defender, just the end of one that's suitable for anything other than a status symbol.

Oh, I don't doubt it will be the actual end. As I said, they will probably turn something out that has no market, and then declare there is no market for Defenders. It's been done so many times.

R_Lefebvre said:

I've been in many assembly plants.

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Really? How many? I'd love to go to just one...

About 20. I've been in just about all of Ford's plants, plus the Viper plant in Warren, a couple other Dodge truck plants in the US, Mexico, and the Magna Steyr plant in Austria.

I've toured the Munich BMW plant, Porsche and Mercedes in Stuttgart, Land Rover in Solihull, GM and Ford in Atlanta and the Defender final line was one of the shortest in overall length of any manufacturing line Ive seen. The bodies are all pre-painted and I'm sure there is a lot of work in the back shops doing sub assemblies but I didn't see those. The final assembly line where it goes from bare frame to running truck is less than two hundred yards long in a straight line. I'd guess there were less than two hundred guys bolting the trucks together but the line move rate was pretty slow. At GM the cars moved to a new position about every 57 seconds - at Land Rover it was probably more like 5 minutes.