Road Tests: Land Rover Defender 110

There's no halfway house with the Defender: you either need this sort of machine or you don't. We've heaped praise on less focused 4x4s and believe they'll do the job that’s asked of them without any problem, so it's hard to justify the Land Rover for 'normal' off-road use. What seperates this contender is its ability to tackle extreme conditions that other vehicles would wince at, over and over again. Whether it's climbing, descending or wading through rivers, the Defender can be relied upon to eat it up and ask for seconds. But with this heavy-duty ability comes a heavy-duty personality. It's by no means relaxing to drive over long distances and the robustness of the components such as the clutch and gearbox make it hard work at times. But we can't think of many machines that inspire such confidence when the going gets tough.