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My friend and neighbor five houses down liked my 22 so much he ordered a 23 (long time LR/RR guy.) He got it murdered by Urban (all black everything. Literally, nothing is not black.) It’s, ummm, very urban looking.
Not the one with the old white defender with the bar work and old tennis rackets in the window? Say it ain't so Biker. Say it ain't so.
Not the one with the old white defender with the bar work and old tennis rackets in the window? Say it ain't so Biker. Say it ain't so.
LOL, nope; those people street park their only cars: 1993 NAS Defender 110 and a Volvo something or other from the 60s (not a Volvo guy so I can’t keep them straight.) Or the other guy, who also parks his 93 NAS Defender 110 a few streets over. There are 500 in the country and I have two of them parked on the streets of my small neighborhood.
No, my friend down the street owns a Disco and a Hurican, and replaced his Raptor with the murdered Urban Defender.
PM me the street number. I haven't hot wired a vehicle since my youth (it was my own beater that I lost the keys to), but I'm sorely tempted to go pick that one up....
Every time I see a 110 NAS go up for sale on bring a trailer, it goes for insane prices.
PM me the street number. I haven't hot wired a vehicle since my youth (it was my own beater that I lost the keys to), but I'm sorely tempted to go pick that one up....
Every time I see a 110 NAS go up for sale on bring a trailer, it goes for insane prices.
Which one? the first one is on The Prado; the second one is on Walker Terrace. It's in much better shape but lacks the wooden tennis racquet in the window.
1) Rear seats step up about 9”, iirc, when folded! No sleeping in back without building out a platform for the cargo area, and it will really eat into headroom. And even if you don’t sleep back there, loading boxes of things from the back with the seats folded and sliding them forward, necessary for big things that fit in the hatch but not through a back door, would be a huge pain because that hump is so high. According to the highest-ranking guy at the demo, no plans in sight for changing this in the future. And for the record, the seat cushion hinges on the front and folds up into the footwell, just like the Defender, but for some reason the seatback is hinged WAAAAAAY up above the cargo load floor and when folded just sticks its entire thickness up there.
2) I dont know how it would compare to the coil-sprung 110, but compared to my air-sprung 110, the step-in height of the Ineos is an unbelievable 12” higher than the Defender!!! And the top of the seat cushion is 9” higher. I suppose it’s both the suspension and the Body-on-Frame construction, but that is a solid deal-killer for my wife, and frankly, it’s like I was used to in my lifted JK Wrangler, but at least I was clearing 37s in that thing. Can’t figure out why this has to be so hard to enter. The result of this is that if I get it and get rid of the 110, I would be switching back to only driving it by myself and we’d always take the GLC300 for joint trips. That’s okay, I guess, but the little MB is basically a nicer RAV4, and I’ve enjoyed these last two years of putting most of our miles on the Land Rover.
Off-road I couldn’t tell any difference in the motors of the IG and the P400, but of course there’s a massive difference that would be felt in spirited driving in the mountains, which I do frequently, or getting around some ***-dragger in a passing zone. Still don’t know why they’re making 288hp and 300-ish torks out of essentially the same size turbo I-6 as Land Rovers. Weird. I’d probably regret that power-to-weight after getting used to the P400. P300 drivers would probably feel right at home in the IG.
The interior is spectacular to my utility-minded eye. The switches are beautiful and plentiful and solid-feeling. The 8 -count-em- 8 aux switches wired to relays and unused wire at the rear, sides, top and front of the car, along with a 500amp switch for the winch, and the fact that if you factory order a winch and/or a roof rack they will install spring sets tailored for your combo — well, all of that is just wonderfully custom and appropriate and a nod to what people like Sir Jim intend to do with this truck, and I for one applaud all of it.
The 17” steelies and KA2s are superb looking, much better than the 18” alloys to my eye, but I’m a steelie lover. They did very well in some wet Georgia red clay during our 30-minute trail drive.
The rock sliders are excellent looking and solidly bolted to the frame rails, like they should be. The truck has some good skid plates, and some areas that could use a little more protection. THey did a good job with a rear curved skid that replicates the optional heavy aluminum skid on the front of the Defender that the tow-eye pokes out through; on the IG, the front one is similar to the 110’s, but the rear has one that does the same thing, and I find it’s not unusual to drop down off a ledge with the rear tires and have the weight of the truck settle heavily and compress the springs, and that muffler and tailpipe rear area take a hard hit on the ledge you just dropped off of. This is a thoughtful touch.
This is a diecast model but shows things pretty well:
The fit and finish of the pre-production models was really nice, befitting a $70,000 specialty truck in my opinion. I wished they’d had the Cordovan-colored leather wheel and handbrake lever instead of all of them being black, but no biggie. Door and panel gaps were straight and small, my test truck made no funky noises when torquing the chassis over uneven logs and ripples, the outside temp was like 70-ish and cloudy today so no need for A/C or heat, so I have nothing to say about that. Everything inside seems hose-washable, much like my 110 is. (Not that I’d literally take a running hose to it, but wetting it all down with a wet rag and scrubbing on it seems doable.
The electronic traction aids were more mundane than the Defenders. No modes — you can choose hi or lo range, locked front, rear, center diffs, Hill Descent Control that works just like Defender’s. I was in a Trialmaster Edition. They had some that weren’t, but nothing we did demanded lockers so it didn’t matter. Reaching overhead to switch on all the off-road elements, and yanking on an old-school **** to engage 4Lo, are just so rewarding. I loved the arrangement of the switches. Seats were supportive, adjustable, operated manually, which I love, and looked and felt high-end.
In the end, I’ll no doubt place my order when they open in May. The top guy said all US orders will be 2024s, with production beginning in October and first trucks onshore in December. They have 8000 reservations. Reservations opened September 2021. I reserved in early February 2022, and he thought that would be delivered early Q1 of next year. US dealers should be named by July, I think he said. They will all be standalone dealers with only Ineos in the showroom, although it could be a combo dealership on the same property, just not in the same building.
I have little worry that I can flip it when it comes in if I decide I don’t want it for any reason. And the jury is out. The way my wife loves to ride in my Defender will give me pause about swapping it for the IG; but I have a long time to mull that, and mull it I will.
I was disappointed in the Sela Green, which is what I was planning on. On this overcast day it read as black; it’s that dark. The Sterling Silver looked great to my eye, with a whole lot of blue in it. Also, the Mushroom, a sort of desert sand color, looked great in real life. Eldoret Blue (the real light, pastel blue) was a little too pastel for my taste — would have preferred more gray and a little darker, like a lighter version of Tasman Blue. All the other colors read like Standard SUV Color Palette to me.
After our group finished I took my truck (and my friend in his 4-door Bronco) and did about 2 hours of offroading in the rest of the park. Got stuck in a watery mud pit that the Bronco (behind me) couldn’t pull me out of. Totally high-centered because of all the huge-tired trucks that no doubt go through there. So I had to pull the winch line out and drag the Defender, with a huge slimy-mud bow-wave getting dug up till I was finally out of it.
This makes me think I’d love the Steelies painted Savannah Beige or Sahara Tan! It’s a great look.
Last edited by NoGaBiker; Apr 6, 2023 at 06:33 PM.
Thank you for the thorough review. I'm trying to wrap my head around what sounds like 10" less interior headroom based on the seat height vs the overall height difference of ~2". Did it feel cramped?
Thank you for the thorough review. I'm trying to wrap my head around what sounds like 10" less interior headroom based on the seat height vs the overall height difference of ~2". Did it feel cramped?
No. I’m 5’11”, never thought about the headroom. And I didn’t have a ruler, but I just stood with my hand against my leg where the floorboard hit it, and same with the seat height, and had a friend to verify I had my hand in the right place, then walked over to the Access Height Defender and did the same thing, and there was a foot difference with the floorboard and 9” (estimate) with the seat top. A precision comparison might reveal the delta to be as little as 6” where I estimated it to be 9” (Like, I didn’t use a sharpie to mark exactly where the height was against my leg, but my friend and I both eyeballed it so we could compare when we got over to the Defender.) So I wouldn’t stand by the 9” in court, but I’d be pretty certain it was at least 6”.
The 12” step-in delta was what I was more focused on because it really felt like I needed the hand-grip I had at the top of the windshield on my Jeep.
