Series & Defender

Land Rover started in 1948 as a stopgap: Rover's chief designer Maurice Wilks proposed a light agricultural and utility vehicle, and the first prototype was skinned in Birmabright aluminium alloy because steel was rationed and aluminium wasn't. It was launched at the Amsterdam Motor Show in April that year, and the Series I, II, IIA and III that followed ran until 1985.

In 1983 the One Ten arrived with coil springs and permanent four-wheel drive borrowed from the Range Rover Classic, followed by the Ninety in 1984. In 1990 they became the Defender 90, 110 and 130, and the line kept going until 29 January 2016, a 67-year run counted back to the 1948 original. The Discovery (1989) took the same Range Rover chassis in a family-friendly direction.

Americans mostly know the classic Defender through a short official window: 525 NAS Defender 110s for 1993 (500 US, 25 Canada), then the NAS Defender 90 through 1997, before the 25-year import rule opened the gray-market floodgates. The badge returned in 2020 as the unibody L663 Defender, while the Ineos Grenadier picked up the ladder-frame torch.