Originally Posted by CincyRovers

I'd say the Outbound is a pretty decent starting point. It has almost the same amount of equipment as your X, and the off-road packages that are standard on the X are available on the Outbound. Sure, the departure angle is decreased, but I have a friend with a nodded 130 Outbound and he said that the departure angle isn't as bad as it seems. Even the folks at the LR Experience center at the Biltmore Estate told me they were worried about the departure angle and it ended up not being a problem. My biggest problem with the Outbound is the lack of choices. You have four colors to choose from and forced to have the Ebony Windsor leather interior.

@sarek is the L663 guru, and provided excellent points in his post above. I agree with him on everything other than the air suspension, but that's just my personal preference and it fits my use case better than the coils. I also had no choice other than air suspension, as it was standard when I ordered mine.

I have a 2021 110 P300. Air suspension was standard at the time and I personally would always spec air suspension. Better ride quality, more ground clearance at the push of a button and easier to get in/out thanks to access height. The adaptive dampers give you better body control, and the air suspension has a significantly higher amount of suspension articulation than the stock coil-sprung vehicles. I don't know why the standard coils have terrible articulation, but there are aftermarket coil springs that fix this problem. Maybe @sarek can explain why this is the case. That being said, I've had a lot of seat time in coil-sprung Defenders and the ride quality is still very good. The air suspension is smoother and more compliant over broken pavement, but the coils do ride exceptionally well and still have over 9" of ground clearance.

I think the P300 is a great engine. It is more than adequate and has plenty of pulling power and has no problems getting up to speed. There is a bit of turbo lag at wide open throttle under 3000 rpm, but in normal driving, it is linear and predictable. It is also quiet and refined as well, which can't be said about this same engine in other JLR products such as the E-Pace or Discovery Sport. It isn't as efficient as the P400, as it has to work a bit harder and it lacks the MHEV system, but you don't buy one of these cars for fuel economy.

I do have the rear locking differential and I agree it isn't necessary at all. I also haven't had any problems with it other than a slight clunk that is normal that went away after changing the fluid. Changing the fluid every 30k instead of 60k is what I will be doing going forward. In older LRs like the LR4, the rear differential made a big difference. Thanks to the L663's new electronic architecture, the ABS, traction control and ESP can react so quickly, that the rear differential is borderline obsolete. Say there are two Defenders specced exactly the same, but one has the rear diff and the other doesn't, the one without will go through everything the rear diff can, with just a little more wheel spin. LR's Terrain Response system and traction control has always been the best of the best, but its on another level with the L663.

Originally Posted by sarek

You are correct about stock rear axle travel on air vs coils. The only reason is that they installed shorter travel shocks in the rear of the coil sprung vehicles. Jlr claims it is for stability, but it is also a simple way to give the air suspension an edge off road. Our simple fix is to replace the rear dampers with longer units. The suspension setup is identical between air and coil other than the springs and the dampers. Another interesting fact is that you can add more travel to the rear of a non locking diff truck since it has almost equal length rear axles. The locking one has a much shorter left rear axle.