Iconic British luxury carmaker Land Rover’s upcoming vehicle Defender, whose prototype recently hit 1.2 million kilometre landmark, will complete its final phase of field testing with Tusk Trust in Kenya.
In a sense, the Defender will be following Indian tourists, who have become the major customers in Kenya with 1.25 lakh of them descending on the country’s safari parks in 2018. The Jaguar Land Rover is owned by India’s Tata Group.
Touted as the toughest and most capable Land Rover ever made, the Defender prototype will tow heavy loads, wade through rivers and carry supplies across one of the toughest jungle terrains, in a series of real-life trials at the 14,000-hectare reserve. By the time the new Defender makes its public debut later this year, it would have passed more than 45,000 individual tests in some of the most extreme environments on earth.
“In addition to the extensive simulation and rig-testing, we’ve driven the new Defender 1.2 million km across all terrains and in extreme climates to ensure that it is the toughest and most capable Land Rover ever made,” said Nick Rogers, director (group engineering), Jaguar Land Rover.
Land Rover said its engineers have taken the test fleet to the 50-degree heat of the desert, the sub-40-degree cold of the Arctic, as well as up to 10,000 feet altitude of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado to ensure the new Defender will take everyday life in its stride, even for its most adventurous customers.
“The incredible opportunity of putting it to test in the field, supporting operations at the Borana Conservancy in Kenya, with Tusk, will allow our engineers to verify that we are meeting this target as we enter the final phase of our development programme,” Rogers added.
The new Defender will be manufactured in the company’s new facility is Slovakia and not in its homeland UK.
“Defender has been designed and developed in the UK, at Gaydon, home to Land Rover’s world-class design, engineering and testing facilities. The new home of global Defender production will be Land Rover’s recently opened, state-of-the-art manufacturing facility in Nitra, Slovakia,” the carmaker said.