Farewell Land Rover Defender - GQ.com
Land Rover's Defender has dodged the sword of Damocles a fair few times in its 67 years, but now the end truly is nigh: production will stop in December. Like the VW Beetle , Citroën 2CV and its British Leyland brother-in-arms the Mini, the Defender - known by that name since 1983 - is one of those vehicles that defeated fashion while somehow epitomising it, and transcended its original remit to... Land Rover, a survivor of successive ramshackle governments during the industrial black hole that swallowed the Seventies, is now an automotive lodestar, riding high off the back of the princely Range Rover brand and the brilliant Discovery. Jaguar Land Rover's new Special Operations division - capitalising on the boom in bespoke and high performance - has modified a Defender to ferry the Rugby World Cup around the UK ahead of this year's tournament. But GQ 's favourite is the singular edition created by Sir Paul Smith , a belated follow-up to the lovely little Mini the great man oversaw in its twilight years at the back. Source: www.gq-magazine.co.uk
