Published:
19 April 2012Tracing its roots right back to the original 1948 Land Rover concept, the new Land Rover Defender has been given a new engine that meets stringent Euro 5 emissions standards and a significant overhaul to improve refinement. This overhaul kept the Defender in the showrooms until at least 2015.
Outside, you can tell the new Defender from the old only by the raised bonnet line (not to give it a macho power bulge, but simply to clear the engine) and, sadly, the deletion of the rectangular air vents beneath the windscreen.
Replacing the old Ford Transit-sourced 2.4-litre diesel is a new 2.2-litre unit, which gets a single variable-vane turbocharger and a new Continental high-pressure (1800 bar) fuel injection system. The engine gets updated fluid seals and a robust single-mass flywheel. (Most modern road cars use dual-mass flywheels for refinement, but these can be fragile.) Despite all this, the power and torque of the new unit are identical to the outgoing engine’s.
A bespoke anti-pollution system was also designed for the Defender. The catalyst and particulate filter are mounted close together and the whole assembly is squeezed into the engine bay, ensuring that the expensive and vulnerable equipment is not destroyed by serious off-roading.
The upshot of the re-engineering is that “virtually every component in the engine bay has been re-located,”, says Land Rover. The 2012 Defender also gets a significantly upgraded NVH (noise, vibration and harshness) kit, including a new acoustic hood for the engine, more efficient sound-deadening and improved seals.
