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