While we eagerly await a completely new Land Rover Defender, it doesn?t take much to rekindle our nostalgia over the bare-knuckled brawn of the original, which was introduced overseas in 1983 but had roots in the original Series I Landie of 70 years ago. A recent short drive of a re-engineered version, the Defender Works V8, celebrating Land Rover’s 70th anniversary, reminded us of all that this handsome brute can be while serving up a surprise under the hood: a modern V-8 and an eight-speed automatic transmission.
The Defender was last offered in the United States in 1997 and has been out of production, period, since early 2016. But now the company?s Land Rover Classic operation chooses primo used vehicles to restore and upfits them with new, factory-original (or better, in this case) components. Carefully chosen off-the-shelf components for this edition include a naturally aspirated 5.0-liter Jaguar Land Rover V-8, an eight-speed ZF-sourced automatic transmission, and upgraded brakes. The traditional live-axle layout remains but benefits from a handling kit that includes new springs, dampers, and anti-roll bars. It adds up to some youthful vigor within the chiseled, handsomely weathered shell. Since Land Rover itself recalibrated everything?the Defender 110 Works V8 we drove was a 2015 model?the bonus is that the powertrain mapping plays nicely with the traction control, and everything simply works. And as we found out in a recent short drive of the Works V8, the ...