► Month Three with the Land Rover Defender
► Witnessing the last ever Defender roll off the line
► Is it truly the end of an era?
So, I am running a car that is officially obsolete. Some will argue it has been unofficially so for some time.
I trundled over to Solihull in our Land Rover to see the last one come off the line – number 2,016,933 – and to see the end of an era. Not just the end of an era for the Defender, but for a way of doing things. There are still handmade cars, but none in Britain are made quite like the Land Rover, and never will be again.
As the last cars inched along, it was followed at a reverential, funereal shuffle by the workers who built them, suddenly finding themselves with nothing to do any more. A genuinely sad moment, the cheers from colleagues each time a worker put their tools down for the last ever time as bittersweet as you might witness.
Bittersweet sums up the Defender. As a family we love it, with dogs, bikes, kids, constantly to-ing and fro-ing, but being the long wheelbase version on tyres more suited to a Caterpillar quarry truck, it is ludicrously useless at handling and manoeuvring. Parking requires the skills and brawn of a Victorian steam engine driver. If you’re not concentrating you can miss your intended space by five yards. And reversing to rectify the mistake just compounds it.
The indicator stalk is an awkward sod that doesn’t work when the car is cold, gears change with a clank not a snick and the steering centres so slowly you must wind your own lock off frantically like you’re trying to stop a weir bursting.
So as I drove out of Solihull, indicators not winking much and doing my usual 17-point exit shenanigans, it was easy to think that this is the end, my friend. Except that in the next month, I’ve got a point-to-point to go to, I need to pull the big roller round the cricket outfield, an adventure to the end of the island needs doing, and a family party means I shall be acting as coach driver for six others, into central London. The Land Rover is dead? Not a bloody chance.
From the driving seat
+ Surprisingly stable motorway cruiser
+ Pathetic winter has been no match for it
– ‘Handling’ at any speed is comically bad
– Van engine is noisy and thirsty
Logbook: Land Rover Defender 100 Station Wagon manual
Price: £43,495
As tested: £43,495
Miles this month: 397
Total miles: 1419
Our mpg: 23.2
Official mpg: 25.5
Fuel this month: £78.47
Extra costs: £0