Land Rover Defender

The Defender name only appeared in 1990, but the vehicle itself is a direct continuation of the Land Rover Series, launched in 1948 as a farm utility vehicle inspired by the American military Jeep from World War II. The boxy shape, ladder-frame chassis and a structure simple enough to repair in any workshop in the world became the model's trademark for decades.

For over half a century, the Defender was essentially the default vehicle of expeditions, NGOs, armies and the Camel Trophy itself, the off-road competition that circled the globe between 1980 and 2000 using Land Rovers as its official vehicle. That reputation for indestructibility is still the base of the car's fame today.

Production of the classic Defender ended in 2016, closed out by safety and emissions rules a decades-old design could no longer meet. Land Rover went four years without the name in its lineup until launching, in 2020, an entirely new generation: a unibody instead of a ladder frame, a modern engine, but still built to go places most SUVs cannot.

• The original Defender/Series design was inspired by the Willys Jeep used by the Allies in World War II.
• Between 1980 and 2000, the Camel Trophy used Land Rovers as the competition's official vehicle on expeditions around the world.
• Production of the classic model ended in 2016, after almost seventy years without a structural reinvention.
• The current Defender (2020 onward) swapped the ladder frame for a unibody, a major engineering shift from the original.