Land Rover Defender 110 X review: Doing the business in luxury

Every now and then in this gig you are given a car to test which you just know will excite a lot of people and rarely does the vehicle in question fail to deliver in that regard.

When you get something which is as beautiful, as sleek and as fast as Rashida Adeleke or Sharlene Mawdsley in full flight, you know there will be gawkers and droolers congregating in your driveway pretty soon.

Other times when you get something as cute as a Golden Retriever puppy, like the VW ID. Buzz, you also know the driveway is going to get congested.

But then, sometimes you can get something that is stylistically as subtle as a flying mallet and as visually formidable as a train crash, but equally you know the thing is going to attract attention. A lot of it.

And so it was recently when the driveway was decorated by a Defender 110 X recently and, to be honest, I should have hired Aiken Promotions to organise the gig, do the stage management, print the tickets and organise security.

That would have eased things greatly because, as it was, it seemed there was more people wanting to see it than the massive queues which form outside the Mao Zedong mausoleum in Beijing every day to pay respects to their former leader.

It has been a while since chez Colley was so popular – the ID. Buzz didn’t count because we only had it for a weekend and that wasn’t long enough for word to get around, with only small parties forming outside the gate for communal drooling sessions.

And why not? Because if ever there was a car with real presence, the Defender fitted the bill and people were genuinely interested in finding out more about this enormous beast. They also wanted get their mitts on it, sit in it, press buttons, make observations (“so this is what you get for 130 grand, is it?”) and generally assert their automotive chops.

That’s all very well and I do appreciate that people get excited about such things, but then I’m not selling the bloody thing and so my levels of goodwill can erode quickly in these situations. But you do your best to cope particularly as you are privileged to be allowed drive these things in the first place.

But the ‘don’t shoot the messenger’ feeling rears its head quickly when people start getting picky about aspect of the design they don’t like and make it seem that you personally had a hand in the design of the rear lights, or some such.

You do, of course, realise that the successor to “the best 4x4 ever made” is going to excite discourse among the great unwashed because the original Defender was such an icon, even if it did display the sort of riveting not seen since Harland and Woolf was in full swing or the bodywork subtlety of a Sherman tank.

No matter, it could scale the north face of the Eiger before breakfast and then traverse the Okavango delta after lunch without breaking sweat. Could the new one come anywhere near matching that level of excellence?

Well ‘yes’ is the very definite answer – and it can also do it while providing unheard of levels of comfort and sophistication, at least as far as previous generation defender owners understand such matters.

I had previously been exposed to the new Defender and came away with a suitably dropped jaw, but it had been a while and when the tester arrived from Dublin I was so overcome by the awesome-ness of it all that I was confused as to whether I had the 110 I had expected, or the even more vast 130.

Despite its hugeness, it was only the 110 I had; I use the word ‘only’ with some trepidation because this thing has a massive physical presence and when you climb (you have to) aboard you have the feeling of entering a large country mansion, or perhaps one of the UK’s smaller but very well-off counties.

On taking the wheel, I was also initially convinced there was a V6 under the hood, such was the willingness to move things along at an impossibly brisk rate. It was in fact ‘only’ a two-litre petrol engine under the hood, but with a lot of PHEV ancillaries including electric motors which boost output to over 400 bhp.

During my tenure with the car someone asked me what is 0-100 km/h capability was and I replied that it was a pretty astonishing 5.6 seconds. “Yeah,” my inquisitor replied, “and I suppose that’s while towing a caravan up the side of Kilimanjaro.” The man’s tone was not dismissive, just awe-struck.

And so it should have been, because this thing weighs about as much as the QEII and yet it’s as fleet of foot as Adeleke and Mawdsley. Top speed is a sphincter-tightening 190 km/h, which is not that fantastic in the greater scheme of things, but when you’re driving something as big as Cork’s County Hall, you have a different perspective.

What’s even more impressive is the handling; you might expect that something so big would roll around like a horse in a sand pit, but not so. This is literally painted to the road and while the steering initially gave off a whiff of vagueness, the reality was (although it took a little adapting to) that the steering is as sharp as a Bowie knife.

The ride too is brilliant and the Defender shrugs of road imperfections with contempt, which is only to be expected give its off-road capabilities (think north face of the Eiger and the Okavango Delta).

Original Defenders were not at all sophisticated (think Badger’s ass) on the inside, but this time around the designers have tried to balance utility and luxury, which is no easy task. 

Exposed sections of metal and the naked star head bolts, as well as the dashboard grab handles and the dinky instrument binnacle, bring to mind the original, but that’s where the similarities end.

Exceptional fit and finish are the order of the day here and things like the optional third front row seat (which folds flat into a broad centre armrest when not in use) are neat and well thought out, although only really suitable for smallies. The truck-like rear mirrors give fantastic rearward vision, but can also obstruct your view on certain corners.

These are minor quibbles, however, as the Defender X’s merits by far outweigh any negatives. The PHEV ancillaries do lessen the load capacity, but unless you’re mounting an Everest expedition, likely to matter little to most customers.

A vast majority of the Defender 110 sales are actually PHEV and, if you drive it like it should be – rather than trousers-on-fire driving – you should see a return of somewhere around 5.7 litres per 100 km (54.9 mpg), which is roughly what the diesel versions will do also.

For all its brilliance then, the only sadness I had about the Defender 110X was that for the majority of owners it will never see the north face of the Eiger, the Okavango Delta, Everest or even pull a caravan up Kilimanjaro. Most will be urban based, assuaging only the egos of owners who will never explore its true potential.

That’s a shame, because this, simply put, is a magnificent piece of kit and it truly deserves its five-star recommendation.