I have mine setup with all the off road packs, towing, solar windshield, cold pack pretty much everything except the heads-ups display or the bigger central display as it was not available at the time. I don’t live in cold place” South Florida’s coldest is 60*” but I got it for when we travel to cold places. I wish I had gotten the white steel wheels instead of the 19’s. But that could not be done as I got the P400 instead of the P300. We tow a trailer that would max out the P300 at 7700 pounds so we got the bigger engine. I do love my Defender but last Sunday I found its limit and it’s the tires the stock ones are no good in the mud. Will be going over to Duratreks soon. I would go with all 1’s on your poll.

 

With a lot of experience with all of the options, here is my short list. I am at 60k miles on mine with all kinds of terrain driven. My focus is capabilitiy off road and simplicity focused on having the least problems when out on the trails. . D90 is preferred for off road (lighter , perfect all around wheelbase, better turning radius) unless people need to be transported. 1. Tow hitch reciever, not tow package.(as stated above)2. P300 (less complex, not mild hybrid, lighter weight)3. Fuji white (looks best after scratches and dirt. Also reflects heat)4. 18 inch steel wheels ( less likely to crack, easy to hammer out a dent, much nicer conical lug nuts)5. Coil springs ( durability, simplicity, easier to upgrade to custom shocks, springs ) air has its benefits, and a lot of them, but there is a larger potential for failure and does force electronic dampening shocks which have known issues and are proprietary. Custom coil springs and fully tuned remote reservoir shocks are in the works6. No active differential. I know a lot of people will disagree, however, this goes back to simplicity vs actual benefit off road. The factory active diff is just that. It decides when to lock and unlock based on settings and feedback. It has its own ECU, electric motor, internal clutches and harness. The other drawback is the differential is much wider. This requires a much shorter cv axles on the left. This is another limiting factor for travel on the rear axle. My 90 does not have the active diff, And I have proven that it is not a requirement for very heavy off-road use. Alternatively the working prototype for an ARB locker is already done to allow a selectable rear cross pinned heavy duty differential. In addition chromoly axles are in the pipeline. Now for the options that have grown on me. Definitely not a requirement,1. Full digital dash. I have to admit, it is nice2. Upgraded sound system. It is so much better than the base system3. Leather interior trim. The wetsuit material has proven to be very difficult to clean and does not wear well over time. The stuff I would leave to the aftermarket 1. Any off road mods including racks, bumpers, ladders , winch kits, skids, and so on. JLR are not a good value here2. Tires. Much better options in the aftermarket. Stick with 18s The choices are very good. 3. Specific software only items. Hence what we call activations. The nice thing about doing these afterwards is that you are not forced to add other options just to get those software only items. Tow assist 2, terrain response 2, and so on. Plus there are some pretty cool ones that you cannot get through JLR. I'm sure I'm missing a couple here, but generally I tell people get the creature comforts you really want mainly on the interior. Those are the items that are very expensive to retrofit after the fact. Leave most of the actual proper off-road items to the folks that know how to do it.. j2c.

 

If you didn't notice, @sarek dropped his mic after that post....

 

First off, I love the D90. Then again, I have been somewhat obsessed driving Land Rovers since the 70's on three continents. When I put this one on order, the option packages tended to be cheaper than getting á la carté. There were a few items I rather really wanted, Clear view mirror, which I thought and have thought for years was about time. The camera system, which again I thought was about time. Locking diffs and all the other stuff are cool, but how did I manage all those years as a field geologist without that on my old Series vehicles? Then I started running the Range Rover Supercharged off road, oh; "now this is totally cool." It had all these items as standard. It does take you brain out of the equation when off road. Air suspension, Sarek and I completely diverge on that. I hate coils. I have had coils fail, really nice damage. They are a pain to change and kind of a bit dangerous when you do. MY D90 ST had the usual Land Rover right hand lean from now soft coils. I had to change them first off. Takes all day. Air shock take about 45 minutes to change and cost $150 aftermarket. Does both the suspension and shock at the same time. Air suspension is like an Apple Watch, don't realize how useful it is until you have one. Do you need it, of course not.

When things get too technical, I walk. I have to anyway to look at the rocks and take samples. So I don't do silly off road things with the car. The perhaps biggest gripe with most of the new "Off Road" vehicles is: they are too nice, so pin striping them from plants, getting dings from rocks branches, cactus, animals and so on are cause for heart palpitations. Old Land Rovers, you put rubbed it out, should you actually wash it, or re-flashed the lacquer to make it even by spraying thinner on it. Frankly we rather like them to have character, since we were too wasted to wash them anyhow after weeks in the field. In Africa, your staff would wash them every day.

Accessories I think are stupid or useless: Red Calipers! Red Calipers, what a complete poser POS thing. I get more grief at mines over that. "Hey you're not cruising Whitter Blvd here." The stupid advertising lights that come on and put a Land Rover on the ground, I need a rebate for that. My friend was giving me grief over that this weekend. While the refrigerator console is very cool and works well, I only use it around twice a year, since I forget it exists. The HUD, very cool its usefulness pales after a while and my wife goes apoplectic about getting out of the view, my sons make fun of it (one is a mining engineer, so out in the field all the time) the other is a Non-Destructive Testing Engineer (also out in the field test things like pipelines all the time). They ridicule it. They still do not have the integration with Apple Maps down, so unless I enter stuff in the Pivi navigation as well, it just does your speed. Cool, worth the money, not really. Circling back to the brakes, those stupid red calipers make it so the steel wheels don't fit! Alloy wheels are about the dumbest thing you can run off road. Steel wheel can take an impact and bend, and you can use your geo pick to make them kinda round again. Alloy, they break off chunks, rendering them useless. Big vs small screen, in retrospect, I don't think it makes any difference. The electronic cluster, very cool and its features are nice to have, especially since the HUD in its present form is kind of a fail. Front and rear skid plates, blessing and curse. You ned to get an oil sucker gizmo, if you have skid plates. Aftermarket ones better, possibly, but they are ultimately a sacrificial item. I don't use winches, in all my years in Africa, South America, Australia, SE Asia only kind of needed one once. Another truck or a come along would have worked almost better. Inexperienced Intern got the truck stuck crossing the Yaqui River towing turbo-generator. Tried to turn too sharp and with 3' of water flowing reduced traction in a tight turn. Would I ever get one and have all that nose weight on my own? Never. The D90X Black detailing and hood, what a PIA, another thing that came automatically. Never looks clean and shows all the dirt. Glass roof, cool for about an hour. Probably cooler if you're not bald. Apperiance Package. All that silver/shiney detailing? Well at least it isn't black to show all the dirt and scratches. Towing package, well kind of a pain to retrofit. I do like the camera and features when I hook up to the aircraft tow bar, but I really do not tow much of anything. So a bunch of money for little utility. I think I have all the special features activated, don't really know, since I most likely would not use them since I forget they are there. Thank god it does not come up with the "007" crap on startup. Might be inclined to damage the Pivi with my fist if it did, what am I 13 years old?

Summary, while much of the trim, fancy paint are a total fail for off-road, many of the modern stuff is actually somewhat nice. Downside; last time I went to Renegade Burn on the Playa with the Range Rover, it threw up a whole constellation of codes from the very heavy playa dust. Luckily, I always carry a code scanner. Blip, erase them all and they disappear. Still, make you wonder when you are deep off road, all these codes come up, it goes into limp mode and you are boned! I would probably only want the P300 version in Africa where service is , let's say, sparse. So simple is better in the real situations. Unfortunately, I have never seen one for rent there. So I am stuck with Ford Rangers or Hiluxs. The stuff does work well, when it works. For my purposes, the Expedition rack works slightly better. I only use it as a platform to observe off, or land the drone. Occasionally I put the RTT up there. I take it off every season. The crossbars are too high. I had to modify the mounting so it would fit in my garage with ski racks. It will fit now, but without skis. Have to put them on outside (one time the air suspension comes in super handy to lower the car to reach the skis). All the USB ports are fairly low power. The 12V outlets nor the 110V do not work if the car is off. Besides, it is academic, since the amount of power available from the battery is barely enough to sustain the car anyway (fail).

It is a comfortable daily driver. The options are cool for less demanding stuff, only because I am always suspicious of tech in the field. Some of them are not truly very useful or somewhat annoying. So should I have sold the 97 D90? Yes, since it was leaky, noisy and slow, even with the V8. It was super in the field, due to simplicity. Just getting there would cause leg cramps and deafness.

 

Its not really the format of the question you asked. But when I was buying my 130, I was agonizing over forgoing the full digital dash display and the clear sight rear view mirror. I thought I'd regret not having these but frankly 6ish months later, I don't miss em' one bit. Nothing about the experience of using the standard mirrior and gauge cluster leaves something to be desired. I've no doubt they're nice toys to have, but I've enjoyed the hell outta my Defender so far and basically forgot those were things I don't have.