The new model will probably be named Defender Sport and will hit the market in 2027.
The British company JLR, formerly known as Jaguar Land Rover, has been toying with the idea of a small brutal SUV for a long time, but all sorts of economic difficulties and leapfrog of top managers prevented it from being realized. In the fall of last year, the company's CEO Thierry Bolloret, who once started a complete reboot of the Jaguar brand, suddenly resigned. Bolloré was replaced by Adrian Mardell, who decided on an equally large-scale transformation at Land Rover: the legendary brand will be divided into three separate brands — Range Rover, Defender and Discovery, because this way the business will be more efficient. Jaguar Land Rover, in light of this decision, was renamed JLR and introduced a new logo in June.
Land Rover DC100
Range Rover, Defender and Discovery will now have their own full-fledged lineups, which means that the question arose of where to grow Defender, because only he has neither younger nor older brothers yet. Meanwhile, back in 2011, the Land Rover DC100 concept (shown in the photographs) announced a small angular SUV, but in the end it became just a harbinger of the style of the current Defender in all its modifications, and, in fact, a small SUV in the gamut since then has not appeared. According to insiders, the small Defender has repeatedly flashed in the company's plans, the last time it was frozen in 2021, and now it has been unfrozen, and quite officially — the British magazine Autocar refers to a statement by Adrian Mardell made during a communication with investors.
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Land Rover DC100
So, the younger Defender, which will presumably be called the Defender Sport, will share the EMA (Electrified Modular Architecture) modular electric vehicle platform with the future Range Rover Evoque, Range Rover Velar and Discovery Sport. All four models will be built at the JLR plant in Halewood, Merseyside, which will be completely converted to trains. Batteries for them will be supplied by the Gigafactory Tata Sons Agratas in Somerset, it should be operational in 2026, with a design capacity of 40 GWh.
The EMA platform has an 800-volt architecture and will allow you to charge the battery at a power of 350 kW. According to colleagues from Autocar, the younger Defender will be more mid-sized than compact — with an overall length of about 4.6 m and a wheelbase large enough to fit a large enough battery. At the same time, the electric architecture with a flat bottom should provide the younger Defender with decent geometric cross-country ability. So far, one can only guess about the design — probably, one should expect flat panels and general box-like proportions.
Add that, in general, interest in brutal SUVs in the world is growing, Chinese manufacturers are mastering them at an accelerated pace — JLR about such a speed of reaction on market demands so far can only dream of. The premiere of the younger Defender is expected in 2026, entering the market in 2027. Previously, it is unlikely to succeed.
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