Land
Rover has a new Defender on its hands for 2020. It's the first truly
new Defender in over three decades, and represents a huge leap in quality,
refinement and technology over its predecessor.
What it doesn't represent just yet is a huge leap in
performance over the previous generation, but that will come soon enough as
Land Rover is out testing a V-8-powered Defender. Our photos show a tester
sporting quad-exhaust tips.
So far, the Defender has only been announced with a
2.0-liter turbocharged inline-4 rated at 296 horsepower and a 3.0-liter
turbocharged inline-6 mild-hybrid setup rated at 395 hp. The addition of a V-8
option should see the Defender's output rise to over 500 hp.
The engine Land Rover is currently testing is Jaguar Land
Rover's 5.0-liter supercharged V-8. However, production of the Ford-sourced
engine is scheduled to end later this year, at which point Jaguar Land Rover is
expected to switch to a BMW-sourced 4.4-liter twin-turbocharged V-8. The latest
version of the 4.4-liter V-8 delivers outputs starting from 523 hp and topping
out at over 600 horses.
It's possible Land Rover is only developing the chassis of
the V-8-powered Defender at this point and will swap in the 4.4-liter V-8 as
development advances.
An alternative could be that Land Rover has stockpiled
enough units of the older 5.0-liter V-8 to last until it's ready to make the
switch to the 4.4-liter mill. This ties in with a report from 2019 that Land
Rover will use the 4.4-liter V-8 in a high-performance
Defender developed by Jaguar Land Rover's SVO skunkworks and aimed at
the Mercedes-AMG G63.
According to report from Autocar published
in May, the regular V-8-powered Defender won't arrive until late 2021, meaning
we'll likely see it arrive as a 2022 model. The SVO version will likely bow
even later.
If you don't need a V-8 in your life, the first examples of
the new Defender are due to reach dealers this spring, though some delays are
possible due to the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic. The starting price is
$50,925, including destination.
by Viknesh Vijayenthiran
http://www.boscheuropean.com
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