Hi all,

Been lurking on this forum for several months now, reading and gathering information.

My wife's Discovery Sport lease is coming up in May and we started searching for a new vehicle late last year. After test driving more than a half-dozen vehicles, she settled on the Defender, much to my liking!

She had a few build requirements for her new car: dark color exterior, black interior, fully powered seats, and sliding glass roof (the glass roof in her disco sport is fixed). I added a couple of must-have requirements too: trailer hitch (for bikes) and off-road package.

After test driving both the P300 and P400, we each enjoyed the extra power of the P400 but would have been content with the P300 engine. Unfortunately, I learned after starting the "build" process that there was no way to get fully powered seats in the P300 and she did not want to go back to manual fore/aft, up/down seats after her fully equipped Disco Sport HSE.

We went to a couple of dealerships and looked at numerous Defenders and after seeing them in person, she was instantly smitten by Carpathian Grey and said: "That's the color I want." Black had been on the table, and even Tasman Blue, but one look at Carpathian Grey and it was game over. A couple of other things became apparent after seeing the vehicles in person too - she didn't like the brighter silver front and rear bumper trim on the Standard/S/SE and preferred the more medium grey on the X-Dynamic. She also didn't like the white or light grey cross car beam and wanted dark grey. Finally, we ruled out any vehicles equipped with the family pack as we have no need for 3rd row seats.

So we finally had the spec dialed in enough that we could search for a vehicle. I used the LR USA website's vehicle inventory tool and searched the entire country and although I found vehicles that were close to the spec we wanted, they all seemed to be missing one "must-have" feature or they were equipped with other features that were not important to us or they weren't the right color. So we were resigned to the custom order process and most dealers were telling us 6 months. This wasn't ideal as her lease was ending in 3 months so I continued reaching out to more dealers and finally found one who had a vehicle on allocation that was coming in, unspoken for, and still early enough that the build could be changed to match our specs. We decided to work with that dealer. The order was placed on 2/20, final amendment date of 3/10, build date of 4/9 and a delivery date of 6/4, which is less than 2 weeks after the current lease ends, a time gap which we can manage.

Then when the MY22 order guide came out and I saw that the first MY22 build date was 4/12, I realized we might be getting one of the last MY21 builds! I priced out the equivalent car and it was $1500 more for MY22, plus we could not get the ventilated seats as an option for MY22 on the SE trim. Neither of us were too hung up on that but she has them in her current vehicle and likes them, so stepping up to the MY22 HSE trim would have been even more coin. We decided to stick with the MY21 and are really looking forward to getting the vehicle in June! Planning to get into overlanding since we will have a great vehicle for the task plus I have a couple of friends with TRD Pro 4-Runners who said they would also like to get into overlanding.

Here is our build:

• 2021 X-Dynamic SE
• Carpathian Grey
• Black interior
• 20" Style 5094 grey rims
• Dark grey cross car beam
• Sliding glass roof
• Tow hitch receiver
• 12-way climate front seats
• Heated rear seats
• Cold climate pack
• Comfort and convenience pack
• Offroad pack
• Front undershield
• Basic interior protection/storage pack

We are planning to purchase this one and we generally keep our vehicles for 7-8 years so I will also be looking at getting the 7yr/100k extended warranty. The Disco Sport was the first car we ever leased and we always felt like we had to baby it since it wasn't ours.

I'll be following interesting threads on the forum over the next 3 months and will post pics after we get our new Defender!

 

Congrats. Carpathian grey was also my top choice for exterior color.

The whole dealer allocation thing is pretty interesting. I did several months of research before settling on the defender as my next vehicle. I then spent a few months deciding what type of defender I wanted to have, the more classic utilitarian version, or the luxury style .

My dealer did not have a p300 and p400 available concurrently to test drive back to back till the beginning of January. I spoke with my sales rep about their allocation and he did not at any time give me any indication of their being a back queue of orders. I took about a month to make a decision on exactly specs what I wanted and placed my order at the beginning of February. Its been over a month and I dont have any build date presented. Someone else who posted here ordered from my same dealership in January and was in the same position as of a couple weeks ago. I am thinking that the dealer could bump up factory orders to any vehicles they have ordered for themselves, but choose not to since its a lower priority than selling another vehicle faster.

The difference in my 21 build vs the new 22 prices is similar to yours....

 

Great story and build. I’m looking at very similar vehicle with carpathian grey in an x, but just had them shift from my21 to my22. I think with the x the price difference between years wasn’t that much and I liked the black bumpers and larger screen. Wasn’t that concerned about timing as it’s all a crapshoot these days and in no rush. Good luck and keep us posted on how it goes!

 

fyi... My 2021 was just changed to a 2022. Dealer included 12 way front climate seats for $300, which doesn't show up as an option on the 22 spec sheet floating around.

 

Yeah I'm a bit mystified too as to how the allocation works. I must have spoken with a half-dozen dealers who all told me I could order one and get the car anywhere between 1-6 months depending on who I spoke with. Those who told me 1-3 months were the ones who got my attention, but then when they checked their allocation, 1-3 months suddenly became 5-6 months. That was more in-line with what I was seeing on here, so I was skeptical that 1-3 months was actually attainable.

I was surprised that only one dealer said I could change an incoming car to match my desired spec. He added a couple of caveats and I'm not sure what the basis for those were, but they matched what we wanted and so I wasn't concerned. Essentially, he said I could change the incoming vehicle with 3 exceptions - it had to be an X-Dynamic SE trim, Carpathian Grey exterior and black interior. He said I could modify anything else except for those 3 items. Maybe the dealership was hedging its bets that if I walked away, they would at least get a vehicle in the trim and colors they wanted and from their standpoint, could easily be sold to someone else.

I would have taken the larger screen too for an extra $140 if available on the MY21 but with the added cost difference overall for a MY22 and the extra wait time, we decided against it.

ksw it sounds like you might have a one-off with the climate seat option - nice score!

 

How far away from you is the dealer that you ordered your defender from?

 

We're on the west coast and will be picking it up in the midwest. Planning to take the week off and do a little road trip. I've done the drive before in 3 days straight at 11-12 hours/day behind the wheel. We'll probably add a couple extra days and take a more circuitous route this time.