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Defenders having the last laugh ?

My friends say my cars are poor mans ferrari. (Landcruiser n Lexus). European brands and JLR own this part of the world. We don’t see really good cars from Toyota, Lexus, Infinity and Acura here.
 
I really liked Disco 3 and 4.
Used to load regularly out of Solihull with export loads, the model i would have bought were those sent to China, sat on soft rate steel springs sensible sized high profile tyres/wheels, NA V8 petrol driving through a simple automatic box, almost never saw this very basic spec out for UK delivery, nor anywhere else for that matter, they took off like a scalded cat when you touched the throttle.
Always thought one of those China spec models and a quick LPG conversion would have made a decent all rounder devoid of so much of the trouble causing electronic tat.

Defender i liked a lot as most do but could never own due simply to the cramped driving compartment, pick up versions in particular the seat wouldn't go back far enough, i'm by no means really tall or too bulky (at the time anyway), but what ruined LR's for me was they never put a big enough Diesel engine in the Defender, which is where the Japanese saw the gap in the market, with the 3.0 litre turboDiesel being available from '93 in UK 70 series, why Toyota didn't bring in the commercial 70 series right from the start has always been a mystery, was it a hangover from the so called ''gentlemens agreement'' re import numbers from back when the UK car market discovered with Japanese cars that they didn't need to buy the often well designed but ultimately unreliable poorly built junk that became standard UK car offerings in the 70's, with sadly few exceptions, instead they could buy totally reliable easy to maintain cars.

I'm sure i'm not the only one here who once they bought a Japanese car, my first being a 2 year old Datsun Bluebird estate around early 80's, the ease and reliability reality of owning one you never quite recovered from, instead of spending so much of your spare time fixing British and European cars, all you did if you had any sense was to service the Japanese car regularly and set about some sort of rust prevention, corrosion due to the UK salting fetish being their only weak point.

In some ways Japanese reliability proved too good, and i'm sure this is the case with so many of the used Landcruisers (in the UK at least where many buyers of new vehicles are often too ignorant or too idle to service and look after their vehicles), prove too reliable and servicing and care gets overlooked.

All of us on these pages know that if the first owners had even once a year in the spring given the undersides of their LC's a good hosing down to wash the winter salt away, the corrosion issues so many of us used buyers face simply wouldn't be an issue.
 
Raj, the irony of this Japanese car lark, going back to the 70s and 80s here, is that i had Indian friends who always ran Japanese cars back then, they could be riddled with rust as was everything at the time but everything still worked and they were totally reliable, finally after being told enough by them to go Japanese and taking a leaf out of their book i tried a Bluebird estate and the penny dropped.
Not so many run them now, why the mass change to German cars.
 
I'd have loved to have bought a Defender. I nearly did. The day before I went to see it/buy it I asked a girl I worked with if I could try her Defender. Never drove it, couldn't even realistically get behind the seat. She was a tall girl too so I was just looking at her, the car, and it broke my heart really for that moment. Then about a month ago I was with someone who had a mongrel of a Series 2 and I tried again. Same thing, I'm just too big for them. Not that I'm bitter or anything, I fit lovely in my LC now!

I think the attraction with the Defender is all cosmetic and the status symbol it's become. Not so much a go anywhere vehicle, but something that can look aggressive and sort of expensive. People putting daft power, money etc in to them without really doing anything to solve the woeful ergonomics when it comes to driving them. They're all show and no real go as far as I'm concerned.

I will say though that while there are plenty of farmers happy that they're selling rotten Defenders for good money, there'll be plenty with Lada Nivas in barns (usually in pairs for some reason) just waiting to be bought up for good money.
 
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This one has Brutal Simplicity Shayne!....https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/184981986072. Even got the old Rag Top
 
Aye thats not bad just needs cutting in half nose to tail and a foot of metal welded in
 
The Aussies made the best "Defender" with the Perentie..... the 6x6 is a fair beast and you don't need to wind down the window to drive it... the 4x4's all had the much better Mazda 4BD or the 6x6 has the turbo version....and a galvanised chassis ....
The 6x6 "recce" version is on my list of Mil vehicles to own....
 
Yeah, I quite fancied one, Grimbo, but I drove a recently imported 110 with the non-Turbo motor (thought it was an Isuzu, but I could be wrong!) and man it was noisy and slow, even compared with an old 200Tdi. Never drove a 6x6 but always thought they would be a good base for an overlander.
 
At a show recently a bloke had I think a 6x6 Ambulance or workshop version .....ultimate base for a camper I reckon ..it had huge fold out gull wing doors.
We were too busy buggering about with tanks and halftracks to get chance to talk with the guy....
 
Been googling and the Perentie is 8 inches wider , interestingly while searching for that i read somewhere "wider like the santana"
 
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