An old Landie Defender 90 now sits in my garage in Jozi, battered and bruised from 18 years of hard labour. It has been to the edge of everywhere and carries the scars to prove it. Buying it makes no sense. That’s precisely the point. My wife is perplexed. “You’re buying that?” Yes, I am. We are.
It’s noisy, agricultural, temperamental and currently nursing a diff issue. Which is why I’m standing in the middle of the Karoo, loading it onto a trailer under a relentless 38°C sun. Out here, nothing hides from the sun, not even a black Defender that’s been sitting for two years in what might just be its natural habitat. I can’t help smiling. I’m seeing it again for the first time in 17 years.
This Defender 90 SVX Hard Top 60-Year Anniversary Edition is rare, with fewer than 20 making it to South Africa. I was there when its previous owner first took delivery. Back then, it felt special. Years later, through friendship and timing, it found its way to me. There’s something poetic about that. The catch? I had to collect it myself. And only after agreeing did I learn about the diff. Not catastrophic, but not something you ignore on a 1,140km journey. So, a plan was formed.
Enter the other Defender. The modern one. Clean. Refined. Effortless. The one tasked with towing its predecessor home. Almost twenty years of evolution, connected by a tow hitch in the middle of nowhere. The old guard, carried by the new. A car that once defined capability is now being pulled by its successor, which is more advanced, more comfortable, more complete… yet still chasing the aura of the original. That’s hard, but that’s the story.
The trip to Jo’burg is as slow as ever. We creep out of a blistering Prince Albert and hit the R407 towards Bergwater, before hitting the N12, which carries us north towards Beaufort West for the N1 trek. The first part of this journey is slow but steady. There’s hardly any traffic on this road, and so ticking over at 100km/h is actually pretty good. The rear view mirror is filled with a bouncing piece of Land Rover’s legend. The N1 is far busier, mainly littered with trucks that are, at times, travelling faster than we are. They love us, though. The love for **Landie** is real. I realise that onlookers everywhere are doing a double-take …literally. Not at the new one… the old one. It still draws attention like few modern cars can, and that says something.
The new Defender, meanwhile, just gets on with it. Effortless torque. Supreme comfort. Completely unfazed by the task. Not as a machine to be reviewed but as the enabler of this entire moment. Without it, this story doesn’t happen. The new Defender D250’s 3.0-litre turbodiesel mill is sumptuous, masterfully smooth when calling on the torque and just so **damn** comfortable and reassuring in this context and on the open road.
There’s no doubt that Land Rover aced it with the new Defender, a really fitting product to follow in the footsteps of old with just enough historical hints and just enough modern luxury and tech. Some call it expensive, but when you tow a 1.8-ton car on a trailer for over 1,000km, you realise just how good this car is.
Two days later, we’re back in Jozi. No drama. No fuss. Just a sense that something meaningful has begun. This Defender won’t stay as it is. It’ll be fixed, improved, personalised. Not restored to perfection but brought back with purpose, with its soul intact and a story to continue.
I didn’t buy this car for what it is on paper. I bought it for what it represents. It predates the modern SUV boom. It predates the screens, the systems and the sanitisation. It’s a hands-on, ever-involving piece of metal that somehow, despite itself, carved out its own global legend and wormed its way into my heart.
Some people get it. Most don’t. That’s fine. Because I do. Just a few days ago, I walked into my garage. The Defender sat next to something that’s new, and polished, and modern. And yet, my eyes went straight to the old one. I didn’t just buy an old Defender. I bought into something irrational, inconvenient… and completely brilliant.
