My son and I are starting week three of circumnavigating the Colorado plateau. We started in Salt Lake City, where I saw a couple new Defenders, but we didn’t see another one until yesterday in Beverly Hills! We’ve driven over 1,600 miles through Utah, Colorado, Arizona, Nevada, and now SoCal, and I can count on one hand the number of Defenders I’ve seen.

Moab was replete with Jeeps; I even saw a Tesla Model X on the trails in Canyonlands but not a single Landy much less a Defender! You can’t throw a rock in SoCal without hitting a Tesla, and of course Range Rovers are pretty common too, but I expected the MT SUV of the year to be better represented in the wild.

 

They are still relatively knew and represent a fraction of the sales of even other Land Rover models if you look at the past what decade.

In the six months or so we've had ours we rarely see them on road trips. Maybe we've seen two or three total in that time while on the road.

We have seen may 1-2 others around home, and ironically we saw a couple in the OBX the last two times we went.

So we're under a dozen total in 6 months from NJ to NC.

 

Sadly, the large large majority of Defenders will not be taken off road. When walking around DFW (specifically Park Cities), I sometimes see nearly a dozen or so new Defenders in only a 1-2 hour time frame.

 

Back in April I went 6 days in a row (not consecutive, but days I was out driving) and saw a defender each time. The second to last one was a 90 which I had not seen in person before. Since then I have not seen a single one. I see lots of LR4's here.

 

Live in the Hill Country of Texas and the "neighbor" across the road has a Defender the same trim, color and year as mine! Every day they seem pretty common to me...

 

ha thats got to be a bit frustrating be the exact same vehicle....your neighbor's dont know who is driving by!

 

My urgency to get better off-roading tires & lifted is to counter the definite lack of dirt on the other one!

 

At least all the ones I see around here are black, white, silver, gray (and very occasionally Tasman), so my Pangea will stand out a little. 6 Sold cars are at my dealer right now (including mine): two white, one black, one silver, a silver 90, and my green 110. No floor models that I could see.

But my neighbor whose backyard touches mine has a Pangea 2021 90 she ordered in November and picked up in April, first one on the ground in Atlanta. So I imagine we'll get confused for one another frequently. At least she's a car chick! Has a bright orange 71 Challenger to go with it.

 

So I might see a few when go to Cape May in a couple weeks?



Seeing all the tricked-out Jeeps in Moab made me realize most of the ones I see around southwest PA will never be taken off-road either. They are certainly the off-road benchmark (at least in ‘Merica), but I can’t imagine driving 1,600 miles in two weeks inside one of them. No offense.

In the Black Pearl of course, highway driving is a dream, as is off-roading in the lap of luxury!

(Yes, I named my Defender but decided to go gender-neutral).

 

LOL, it's why I just picked up my 110. I've driven this out to Moab from Atlanta for 2-3 weeks every spring since 2016. I made the decision to order the LR in March, and drove out for my last trip March-April of this year, then sold it to one of my buddies who was on the trip. 1800 miles between Friday 5pm and Sunday noon in that beast is just TOO. DAMN. MUCH. (To be fair, those are the 37" off-road tires; I drove out there and back on 35" RT tires, which are between ATs and MTs in aggressiveness, and trailered the big bias plies. BUt still!)




Now I can't wait to head back out, probably this fall. The off-roading won't be quite as good, but the On-Roading will be 900% better.