This was a big year for Land Rover, with a seventy-fifth birthday to celebrate, some major product news, and a lot of change on the corporate side. With the New Year on our doorstep, let's take a look back at the Land Rover happenings of 2023.
This was a big year for Land Rover, with a seventy-fifth birthday to celebrate, some major product news, and a lot of change on the corporate side. With the New Year on our doorstep, let's take a look back at the Land Rover happenings of 2023.
The year started with the huge news that Jaguar Land Rover returned to profit for the first time in two years. The Covid-related shutdowns, supply chain issues, and semiconductor shortages have done a number on the company since 2020, and returning to profit was a massive step in recovery. Though there are still some lingering parts supply issues, Land Rover (and the auto industry as a whole) is closer to the benchmark of "2019 normal" at the end of this year than at the beginning. Your local Land Rover dealer probably has a small lineup of in-stock new Defenders for the first time ever, and custom order delivery times are coming down.
The Velar was updated for the 2024 model year, with the new Pivi Pro7 interactive system. This removed every button and control from the dashboard but the start/stop button and the shifter. It immediately made its way through the Range Rover line, and most interestingly, resulted in a significant interior redesign on the Range Rover and Range Rover Sport after just a year on the market.
After the massive success of the LEGO New Defender (that technically debuted before the vehicle itself in 2019), Land Rover's Classic department and LEGO collaborated again to celebrate the 75th Anniversary. The New Defender set has been discontinued, and in its place is a 2,336-piece Classic Defender, complete with winch, roof rack, snorkel, and roll cage. For those who can't swing the $239.99 set in this economy, there's also simpler a $14.99, 150-piece set. With the growing popularity of LEGO and the huge community of Adult Fans of LEGO (AFOL), the set has brought the celebration of Land Rover's anniversary beyond the world of enthusiasts and owners.
The April 30th anniversary of the Amsterdam Motor Show, where the first Land Rover was introduced to the public, was clouded over by JLR's fumbled announcement of their new "House of Brands" strategy. Intended to move the company forward and create clearer places for its various model lines, it broke Range Rover, Discovery, and Defender into their own brands (alongside Jaguar), while turning the Land Rover name into an overarching "trust mark" that "underpins them." The 75th anniversary was spent not celebrating Land Rover's incredible history but instead was met with a flurry of articles about how it had been killed off. A few months later, it seems like "House of Brands" is instead a confusing marketing strategy in which marketing materials will go to almost comical lengths to avoid saying "Land Rover." Like many other attempts at reconciling the incredible brand value of both the Land Rover name and the names of its models, this one will probably go to the wayside in a few years, another step in trying to reconcile a brand nomenclature within a company that was once a subsidiary itself.
With the pandemic-era issues behind us, and Defenders flowing more freely out of the Nitra, Slovakia factory, Land Rover can now turn to making some fan-driven editions. The summer brought the announcement of the Defender 130 Outbound, a five-seat version without cargo area windows designed to maximize storage; the County editions, an aesthetic package designed to pay tribute to the iconic striped 1980s and 1990s Defenders; and a Defender 130 V8, which brings the burly 5.0 Supercharged AJ-V8 motor to all three sizes of Defender. They even brought a 20-inch "steel wheel" to the Defender, replicating the design of the popular 18-inch steelie in alloy for the more powerful models.
A surprise this summer, Land Rover's Classic Works brought us the Defender Works V8 Islay Edition, a reworked 2012-2016 Classic Defender that pays tribute to Islay, where Spencer Wilks had a home. Legend has it that his groundskeeper saw him driving a lifted Rover 12 sedan around the grounds and joked that “that must be a ‘Land Rover!’” What became the Land Rover was under development, and needed a name, and it stuck. The vehicle is a visual tribute to Islay and Spencer Wilks' famous personal Series II, and comes with everything from a custom tweed interior by Islay Woolen Mill to a bottle of scotch made by the Wilks brothers' descendants.
With everyone racing towards electrification in 2023, JLR found themselves without a battery plant to make their eventual transition. With Jaguar vehicles set to go all-electric in 2025, and Land Rover looking at gradual electrification, this was a necessity. They were able to convince a British government desperate to keep business in the country to subsidize a site in Somerset, England, to the tune of half a billion pounds.
Land Rover geeks who also have an interest in non-British royalty got a surprise at the Jordanian Royal Wedding over the summer -- Crown Prince Hussein and his new bride Rajwa Al Saif rode from their wedding ceremony to their reception in a 1984 Wood and Pickett Range Rover Classic, a "Sheer Rover." The pinnacle of 1980s Range Rover conversions, which were incredibly popular in the Middle East, it had first been ordered for a 1984 visit by Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip to Jordan, to take them on a tour to Petra. Escorted by a set of red military Defenders, the parade through Amman was quite the sight.
In mid-June, Land Rover enthusiasts from across North America gathered at Greek Peak Ski Resort in Cortland, New York to celebrate the Diamond Jubilee of our beloved brand. What ensued was one of the largest gatherings of Land Rover enthusiasts on this continent since the fiftieth-anniversary event at the same site in 1998. Land Rover sent famous faces from both the international and North American sides of their operations and host organization ANARC (Association of North American Rover Clubs) put on an excellent and well-planned event. ANARC has rumblings of something on the same scale for the 80th anniversary in 2028 -- stay tuned.
In recent years, 1950s Land Rover adventuress Barbara Toy has been getting back in the spotlight as the incredible person she was. The biggest problem has always been access to her books, which have mostly been out of print since the 1970s, and command high prices on the secondary market. John Murray Press, a British publisher, brought back the story of her drive to Ethiopia in the 1950s, In Search of Sheba, this summer. Stay tuned for more Barbara Toy news in 2024.
Adrian Mardell, formerly JLR's Chief Financial Officer, took over the company in an interim role in fall 2022 after Thierry Bolloré departed the company for "personal reasons." (The rumor mill says that reason may have been his inability to get JLR back on its feet as fast as other automakers did post-Covid.) He's now been set as the regular holder of the CEO role, with a three-month contract. So far, things seem to have gone well, with the company making great strides towards profit and operational efficiencies.
Defender Trophy, Destination Defender, and TReK all went to Texas this year, for a multi-week span of events in the Austin and Houston areas. Defender Trophy and TReK had been tied together already the past few years, based at some of Land Rover's Experience centers in North Carolina and Vermont. With Destination Defender rolled in this year to the geographical combination, it's possible that in 2024 we'll see the entire Defender event calendar shifted to another part of the United States. Stay tuned!
The last major news this year was the preview of Range Rover Electric, the anticipated Range Rover EV. The Modular Longitudinal Architecture (MLA-Flex) that underpins the new Range Rover and Range Rover Sport was designed all along to host everything from a V8 to a full EV, and now for the first time, we'll see an all-electric Range Rover from the factory.
That's about it for 2023. It's been an exciting year for Land Rover enthusiasts, especially with the anniversary. Of course, many of us also had our own milestone adventures this year, as we all continued to explore with our Rovers -- the spirit of adventure that drew us to them in the first place. Here's to 2024, and all the adventures it holds for us.
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