RIP Land Rover's Defender, the Greatest Car Ever - Bloomberg View
Tuesday was the final day you could have ordered a new Land Rover Defender, one of the world's last real cars. In 2013, when the British carmaker Jaguar Land Rover first announced plans to discontinue the model, I didn't really believe it: The Defender is by far the best car I've ever owned, and many others are as emotional about it as I am. Yet, here we are. Regulation and marketing-driven blandness, the enemies of everything original, have killed it. . Rover, the original manufacturer, based its design on a World War II warhorse, the American Willys MB, also known as the Jeep. In 1947, British farmers needed a cheap, sturdy off-road vehicle, and Rover built one using what was available in a war-ravaged country. By then, it had already become an icon, a symbol of British patriotism: a car that rejected comfort as a concept but got the job done -- and was a design masterpiece. The modern version, called the Defender since 1991, has the DNA of its predecessor. In the 2006 movie "The Queen," Elizabeth II -- played by Helen Mirren, who won an Oscar for the part -- breaks down fording a stream in a Scottish forest. (The monarch drives one in real life. ) The Queen trained as a mechanic during World War II, and her Defender is so simple that she attempts to tackle the problem herself. Source: www.bloombergview.com
