Land Rover Defender review - Reliability & safety
"The Defender's reliability isn't known yet, but Land Rover has gone to extreme lengths to prove its strength"
There's always been an odd disparity between the Defender’s rugged looks and toughness and the brand’s poor reliability reputation. One reason for issues has been an ageing design, which certainly won't be the case with the new model.
Though reliability is shockingly bad, customer satisfaction is actually rather good. Land Rover came in 10th place in the 2024 Driver Power brand satisfaction survey, with buyers liking its interior and exterior designs, fit and finish, ride and handling, practicality and boot space.
Land Rover Defender reliability
The Defender’s body structure and technology are all-new compared with the old model, and the car has been developed with future-proofing in mind. It has also been tested to destruction, including more than 700,000 development miles and around 62,000 validation tests. These include 'Extreme Event' procedures that test for 'repeated and sustained impacts, above and beyond the normal standard for SUV and passenger cars.'
Reliability figures for Land Rover are markedly bad, with a concerning 40.6% of owners reporting an issue with their Land Rover within the first year of ownership.
Safety
Along with its tough frame, the Defender is fitted with an impressive amount of safety kit as standard. It all helped it achieve five stars in Euro NCAP crash tests, making it even more desirable for families.
Technology including automatic emergency braking, lane keep assist and traffic-sign recognition is standard, while X-Dynamic SE adds blind-spot warnings and a rear traffic monitor, along with an ISOFIX point for the front passenger seat. Its strong rating gives the Defender a significant advantage over the Jeep Wrangler, which only scored one star in 2018 crash tests.
