Due to the strict safety and emission regulations in force in Europe, Land Rover has thus confirmed the end of production of the Land Rover Defender for 2015.
The British brand claims to be working on a successor to the Land Rover Defender, but for now, it does not reveal the name or details of the new model, nor does it reveal the expected date for its arrival on the market.
According to analysts at Bernstein Research, who recently carried out a report on the JLR (Jaguar-Land Rover), the successor to the Land Rover Defender could be delayed until 2019, due to a business model that is proving weak and the projected volumes too low for ensure its profitability.
Despite having presented a pair of concepts at the Frankfurt show two years ago that revealed a possible path to the successor of the Land Rover Defender, these proposals, named DC100, based on a construction mainly in steel, were cancelled. On the table lies the possibility of using the more expensive aluminum base of the new Range Rover, which would give rise to a Defender with another commercial positioning.
The Land Rover Defender has its origins after World War II, having been born in 1948, being the first model of the brand. The name Defender, however, only appears in 1990. Despite the necessary evolutions over time, the Defender is still, in essence, very similar to the Land Rover Series I, obeying the same type of construction, based on steel and aluminum body panels.
Although iconic, with a huge legion of fans, it is a marginal model in today's Land Rover. According to data from JATO Dynamics, only 561 Defenders found a buyer in Europe in 2013 (data updated as of August).
