Despite selling slightly more than 18,000 Defenders in 2010 globally, this legendary British carmaker is very serious about putting out a replacement for the Defender as early as 2014 with a concept showing by 2013. Tata (the owner of Land Rover) will be investing a huge amount of money in the project. It’s expected that the replacement will be offered in a broad range of styles such as station wagons, pick-ups, and bespoke specials for commercial customers. It will also have a new platform as well as factory space to cater for the new technology that will be employed. Land Rover is already on the strategy phase of the Defender project. This means that work has begun on the engineering, design and marketing divisions and that the company is determining the number and the variety as well as the expected sales volumes.
The company decided to invest a lot in a traditional Land Rover based on a massive market research program that broke up the global SUV into three segments; luxury, leisure and utility. The global utility SUV segment is expected to account for 3.25 million sales annually, a number that’s predicted to increase by 25% by the year 2017. On the other hand, the global luxury SUV segment is anticipated to reach two million sales and it may go up 35% by 2017. Meanwhile, the leisure sector made up for about eight million units in 2010. Meanwhile sales of the Defender pickup and wagon is picking up in Malaysia beyond the government sector.
