New Defender News

naks

Well-known member
looks like this is the first one to be pranged, an altercation with a Yaris. No other details


Vmsqww5.jpg
 

umbertob

Adventurer
Do we know at what speed the collision occurred? The FB post doesn't say. If it was at, say, 50 mph, that's not much damage for an offset collision like that. Also, where's the "alleged" Yaris? You often find some paint "stamps" from the other vehicle on bumper and painted surfaces after an impact, I don't see much there. Could have been a concrete post, too.
 
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ChasingOurTrunks

Well-known member
looks like this is the first one to be pranged, an altercation with a Yaris. No other details


Vmsqww5.jpg

I’d be curious to follow this along to learn more but I don’t use facebook. Any updates that folks have (or other examples of accidents) would be appreciated — there are some things I like (like the passenger compartment is obviously safe, but that may or may not be a big deal depending on the speeds and forces involved). Talk all we want about “off road capability” and “Land Rovers are unreliable and will leave you stranded in the back country and you could DIE so buy a ’Yota and live forever” stuff, the biggest risk most Overlanders face on any trip is a run-of-the-mill traffic accident. So, I want a car that can crash well.

I expect the Defender will get 5 star ratings all around because of the performance of other JLR vehicles (it may already have them, I just haven’t heard of it being tested yet). It’s interesting to me how rarely this topic of crash-worthiness comes up in the Overland community. Some popular overlanding rigs perform extremely poorly in crash tests, and for me and mine, that is a major point that would push me to better-rated vehicle. We can yearn for the “Good old days” of vehicles all we want, but the fact is a person is WAY more likely to walk away from a modern car wreck than you were in the “golden age” of body-on-frame solid axle rigs.
 

Blaise

Well-known member
Great post! I also am surprised at how low safety ranks with many people, not just with regards to Defender/offroad driving but even with my other hobbies. You'll often see a $20k motorcycle without an airbag setup or even riding pants or boots, or folks who will spend $10k on power/brake/suspension mods for their track car before considering rollover structure + halo seat + hans.

In a previous life, I had six (yes, half a dozen) mazda miatas. I got really worried about the safety aspect and decided to upgrade but I don't fit into the latest (2016+) one, so my sports car is now a Subaru BRZ. I like knowing I have an excellent structure around me, and so should most. A friend unfortunately was not so lucky and recently rolled his '99 and has been in the hospital for months with broken legs, arms, neck, back, etc. Bad stuff.

I previously point out that the LR3 that somebody claimed was a 'tank' and doesn't 'crumble' does indeed do exactly that to save your body. So if you see a crumpled modern car post-crash, it did exactly as it should.


As for the defender, this is all I've found so far:

 

DieselRanger

Well-known member
I’d be curious to follow this along to learn more but I don’t use facebook. Any updates that folks have (or other examples of accidents) would be appreciated — there are some things I like (like the passenger compartment is obviously safe, but that may or may not be a big deal depending on the speeds and forces involved). Talk all we want about “off road capability” and “Land Rovers are unreliable and will leave you stranded in the back country and you could DIE so buy a ’Yota and live forever” stuff, the biggest risk most Overlanders face on any trip is a run-of-the-mill traffic accident. So, I want a car that can crash well.

I expect the Defender will get 5 star ratings all around because of the performance of other JLR vehicles (it may already have them, I just haven’t heard of it being tested yet). It’s interesting to me how rarely this topic of crash-worthiness comes up in the Overland community. Some popular overlanding rigs perform extremely poorly in crash tests, and for me and mine, that is a major point that would push me to better-rated vehicle. We can yearn for the “Good old days” of vehicles all we want, but the fact is a person is WAY more likely to walk away from a modern car wreck than you were in the “golden age” of body-on-frame solid axle rigs.
Could have been salesman BS, but my local sales manager told me Land Rover built the D7u (L462 Discovery) chassis passenger compartment to survive being rolled over 3 times, or being dropped on its roof from I want to say 30 feet, but don't quote me on the height. The multiple rollover test was specifically a target because of its design for offroad use.

The D7x (Defender) unibody is supposedly strengthened further over the D7u.

Now, crash worthiness in a collision is different than rollover strength. Unibodies have vast advantages over body-on-frame vehicles in collision safety because they are specifically designed to dissipate crash energy and transfer it around the passenger compartment as a single unit made of different alloys of different strengths, whereas a body - including the passenger compartment - bolted to a ladder frame can only transfer as much energy as the bolts holding it to the frame can absorb before they shear.

The Defender should be a fantastically safe vehicle, but don't expect anything other than a total loss in any impact above about 25mph.
 

JackW

Explorer
I've known several people that have had pretty major crashes in the various generations of Discoverys and they have always performed well in crashes (especially rollovers). I'm very confident the new generation of D5 and Defender will be pretty safe if things go badly.
 

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