2020 Defender
- Thread starter Roverlady
- Start date
If you really want to see just how fucked up their brand is, just cruise Ebay looking for any specific Range Rover; doesn't matter which one. Just stick to the categories like the average person would, and be amazed at how poorly they've managed their image. People still think "Ford makes them", and others don't understand the differences between the various Range Rovers. Many don't believe the same company manufactures the Discovery.
It's a fucking joke. I don't even take Land Rover seriously as a vehicle manufacturer.
It's a brand with potential that's been left to languish on one back burner after another. People seem to have the idea that Land Rover is a proud entity producing cars with a singular vision. God damn, people. What the fuck. On what planet does that prostitute know who her real daddy is? Hell, it took Tata just to get most of their cars pointed in the same direction.
Cheers,
Kennith
It's a fucking joke. I don't even take Land Rover seriously as a vehicle manufacturer.
It's a brand with potential that's been left to languish on one back burner after another. People seem to have the idea that Land Rover is a proud entity producing cars with a singular vision. God damn, people. What the fuck. On what planet does that prostitute know who her real daddy is? Hell, it took Tata just to get most of their cars pointed in the same direction.
Cheers,
Kennith
Jeep Wrangler Sales Numbers, Figures, Results, Reports
See Jeep Wrangler sales numbers, sales figures, sales results and sales reports from Fiat Chrysler Authority.
fcauthority.com
Who the hell wants a basic, solid axle off-roader?
Jeep Wrangler Sales Numbers, Figures, Results, Reports
See Jeep Wrangler sales numbers, sales figures, sales results and sales reports from Fiat Chrysler Authority.
Who the hell wants a basic, solid axle off-roader?
Grenadier may be the real test.
I would bet my next paycheck that the vast majority (>90%?) of people buying jeeps wouldn't know what a solid axle is if it fell out of the sky and landed on them.
Jeep Wrangler Sales Numbers, Figures, Results, Reports
See Jeep Wrangler sales numbers, sales figures, sales results and sales reports from Fiat Chrysler Authority.
Who the hell wants a basic, solid axle off-roader?
People are buying Jeeps not because, "Damn! I love the solid axle over IFS!," but because it looks cool and projects an image of the driver as active, outdoorsy, go-getter. It has nothing to do with the capabilities of the vehicle (solid axle or otherwise), but the image it is. It's the whole "Trail Rated" thing.
It's like the Corvette (or any other sports car). How many owners (middle aged dudes) are actually taking it to the track to really see it perform? How many are buying it to look cool (and pretend to be their younger selves).
If we want to know how many jeeps are bought for the actual purpose of off-roading, I'd say look at the Rubicon sales figures. Then take half.
Jeep Wrangler Sales Numbers, Figures, Results, Reports
See Jeep Wrangler sales numbers, sales figures, sales results and sales reports from Fiat Chrysler Authority.
Who the hell wants a basic, solid axle off-roader?
You're just not seeing the forest for the trees, man.
They can only manufacture that vehicle because they still have a communal foundation for their brand image. That is the ONLY reason it's not a crossover already.
Who wants a basic, solid-axle off-roader, you ask? Not a single person that's worth noting on their quarterly report. Jeep enthusiasts are branded assets used to legitimize other vehicles, and right now they cost less to maintain than they bring in. The harder it gets to make that Wrangler a production case with each iteration, the more they will have to work for their toys if they want to keep them.
People have a hard time understanding this stuff, for some reason. Jeep doesn't care about you. Land Rover doesn't care about you. You are not important in the slightest to them; it's all marketing. If the community is strong, you can take advantage of that. If it's not...
Well, clearly you get a modern overland vehicle instead of a rock-hopping pile of scaffolding.
It's incumbent upon Land Rover to maintain a community to legitimize their vehicles. If that community fails, however, or if sales in another direction make them irrelevant... That community needs to organize and assert itself. The five thousand people who cared that needed to look like fifty thousand never showed up.
Cheers,
Kennith
Oh I agree with that 100%. Plenty of built up Jeeps that have never seen, or will ever see, a fire road. But that's besides the point. The point is they SELL. There's a market for them. And JLR could make a serious dent in that market with a real Defender. And it wouldn't cost a fortune to build.
That's Ford's plan with the new Bronco. I recently spoke with the owner of our local Ford dealership. The new Bronco will give Ford a direct competitor to the Wrangler. With removable doors and removable roof. Rugged off-road chops and some serious upgrade potentials (think 6.2ltr monster Bronco).
And then there is the new Defender.....
It would be nice if it was all so simple.
Land Rover is not in a position to disrupt that market. It's not that easy, and even if it was they wouldn't be prepared for it.
They couldn't even capitalize on it if it fell in their lap. The brand is not strong enough to support a halo car.
Cheers,
Kennith
Which really shows the change over the decades as at one time the Range Rover was the halo Rover.
Reading these last few post made me wonder. Has there ever been a vehicle that appeals to a wider cross-section of the driving public than the Wrangler? Can you really say that there's a typical Wrangler owner? Drive through any HS parking lot and you'll see a few Jeeps, and the 16 yr old sophomore cheerleader might be just as likely to own it as the captain of the football team. Form the middle-aged men driving them with everything but the kitchen sink bolted to them to the MILF in her powder blue Jeep dropping off the kids at soccer practice. And Land Rover had a competitor in the Defender and dropped it. I don't recall the timeline but did their decision to withdraw from the US market coincide with the rollover lawsuits that killed the CJ?
They didn't have a competitor at the time. It was twice the price and they were happy to let it remain an exotic quantity.
That would be different today if they'd taken a different path decades ago.
Right now, they've finally parked the Porsche and stopped reliving the one play that made them cool in college sports. The intervention is over, and now it's time to get back on the horse and find out who they really are as a company, because they're not going to like what they see when they look closely at what they've become over the years.
Land Rover is the "Jeep enthusiast" for Tata; The JLR portfolio legitimizes them in the global market, but that's not the saddest facet of what they've become...
For everyone else, they've been little more than a rented tech lab with port benefits. If something doesn't change, when Tata sells them, Land Rover will be exactly where they were, and Tata will have much better off-pavement vehicles and Global recognition. Land Rover has been digging their own grave, master by master.
Now, though, they are approaching some idea of a coherent image, at the very least. They've mentioned a Defender Sport, as well. That leaves them with one of the most baffling product lines of all time:
Range Rover
Range Rover Sport
Range Rover Velar
Range Rover Evoque
Discovery
Discovery Sport
Defender
Defender Sport
Now, that's pretty bad already, but it seems the Defender Sport may be a more upmarket interpretation, landing the Defender Sport alongside the Range Rover Evoque, rather than the Discovery Sport or Range Rover Sport; both of which clutter the market so thoroughly that it's become difficult to reach information regarding the Range Rover and the Discovery... You know... The big ones.
The technical term for the situation in which we find Land Rover is: "Fucked Chi"
It makes doing the stuff you actually find interesting nearly impossible. It may sound like pointless nonsense, but that's what's been holding Land Rover back for decades: Pointless nonsense.
Cheers,
Kennith
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That Grenadier looks cool. I’ve been thinking about replacing my 2004 D2. All the mechanicals have been replaced at some point, some pieces many times over, but now the body is getting brittle with age. The big question is what to replace it with? My mechanic keeps telling me to get an LR4 but I don’t think I could love an ugly baby.
I guess Land Rover wasn't the only company that made a vehicle that competed with Jeep for market share and couldn't capitalize. Came across this at work today.
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It sounds cool, but I can't actually find a pic. Seems all the pics used in relation to the name are of Defenders. I can't even find a rendering. Do you have a pic you can post?
I think comparing a low quantity import of the 70s to Jeep when people barely bought Carinas and Accords isn’t the strongest argument.
Are you really calling the Land Cruiser a low quality import? Especially compared to 70s vintage Jeeps?
But that's a really good example of how the open-top bare bones vehicle evolved into something much more refined, and in many ways, more capable.