Considering purchasing the gear box for my Defender. Any pro/cons? OEM/not, body color/other?

 

Body color, not the standard light grey -- unless you have a base model w/ steelies...in which case the light grey works well with the overall base car look.

And if you have a black roof car, or black a-pillar / signature "graphic" car, you could of course go black instead of body color.

If you think about it, the box (and ladder) are really 2 of the most innovative OEM auto accessories around, very specific to Land Rover and this model vehicle. I'd love to hear the actual internal story about the box.. Was it Gerry's team designed it, the accessories team designed it, etc. etc, has it exceeded or fell short of sales expectations, did they have to crash test it, etc... basically, how did it come to life ?

Notably the only thing I do not like about is the two holes it leaves in the lower (albeit replaceable) painted metal strip underneath the rear quarter side windows. I feel like they could have added nice stainless mount points / discreet fittings to the exterior instead perhaps.

I do get amused when I see the fancy folks on Instagram with a whiskey bar in the box at the races or whatever it is they put in there. And the box would be handy for wet anything (dog towels after the river, wet shoes and socks, wetsuits post surfing crammed in there). So I do see a use.

I also could not recommend the onboard air compressor more if you're throwing money at the Defender. I aired up a neighbor's spare tire which was flat, and was the hero of the neighborhood party this Saturday dragging the orange hose out of the Defender, turning on the compressor and filling it up.

This all said, I don't have the box.

 

Ditto, everything that @nashvegas wrote! Would love to know the backstory and wish they had better mounting "style".

 

If it was a pop-on/pop-off accessory I'd have ordered mine with one. But 95% of the time I don't want that tumor back there. Probably more like 99%, truth be told.

 

LOL


@NoGaBiker the early years

 

That box is the biggest POS I have ever seen an OEM ask $1000 for in my life. I was kind of into it when the pictures suggested it was a nice aluminum piece of kit. First time I saw it in a showroom I, no ****, asked the sales associate if it was just a cheesy mockup because the "real" one was not available. I legit thought it was something Land Rover maybe cobbled together to just sit in the showroom. Kind of one step up from those cardboard TVs in furniture stores. This thing is utter crap.

 

That's what made me pose this question - it's pretty big, I thought wind resistance and noise might be an issue. And 99% of the time not sure what I would put in it day-to-day that I wouldn't feel I had to lock up, or wanted the hassle of unlocking all the time. So kinda comes down to it's an aesthetics thing, and not sure the 90 looks better with one.

 

If I had a true need for its function (i.e. I was a swimmer or frequent paddleboarder or something that produced lots of gross, wet gear I peeled off before the drive home, AND for some reason the interior of the truck was too full to accommodate another 15 liters of cargo), I think I would just get one of the stap-to-the-rear-tire waterproof bags made for Jeeps, keep it in the back of the truck, and deploy it when needed.

But that was a lot of very specific “ifs” in the parenthetical above. Especially the “won’t fit in the cavernous back of the truck, but is small enough that it will fit in the tiny cargo box” bit. Most likely I’d just keep a good wet-sack in the back, put my crap in it, roll the top up, and be done.

 

Was loading a roof rack on a friends 110 that has one of those gear boxes. Would have been a lot easier to load the rack with a ladder on both sides…….

So I will be putting a ladder on both sides of mine. After I get my back ordered OEM roof rack of course……….

however, the gear box filled with liquor,ice, and glassware doesn’t seem all too bad

-gary

 

I ordered a gloss black from Vulkan for 2 or 3 hundred and use it to store dog gear (water, leashes and dirty stuff). had no quality issues with it so far - it's plastic but quite heavy and sturdy. i would put it on again.