"When will we get a Defender? Maybe in 2013
Sales in the United States will be critical for the Defender replacement, which is scheduled for 2013 in Land Rover’s future product plan. To justify the investment, Land Rover reckons it must double yearly sales of 25,000 to more than 50,000. It can count on new markets such as Russia, China and India for some of that increase, but the United States will be the key.
Front and side airbags will be a prerequisite, and so will an all-new chassis, because today’s simple setup won’t allow airbag integration.
Land Rover can’t look to its own technology, either. It admits that the platform under the LR3 and the Range Rover Sport is too expensive for a vehicle that needs to list from about $40,000 in the United Kingdom (that figure includes a heavy dose of taxes).
One possibility is for the next Defender to share development with Ford Europe’s Transit truck, which offers flexibility of construction, a huge variety of body styles and toughness closer to the Defender than Land Rover’s other upmarket models."
Great. It's going to be a bus.
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Stu
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