Land Rover Defender 90 D250 2021 UK review

Uncannily comfy for what it can do off road, and the new six-pot diesel engine suits its character perfectly Well, that’s interesting: roughly a year after introducing it, Land Rover has dropped the four-cylinder diesel engine from the Defender. Which means that if you want a Defender that drinks its fuel from the black pump, you now have just one engine to choose from: the recently introduced Ingenium 3.0-litre straight six. Lovely stuff.It’s available in three guises: D200, D250 and D300, with power outputs ranging from 197bhp to 296bhp. Here, we’re sampling the mid-level D250, which kicks out a handsome 245bhp and 420lb ft of torque, enabling our three-door Defender 90 test car to hit 62mph from a standstill in a respectable 8.0sec.Jaguar Land Rover was extremely late to the party in launching this particular powerplant, but the firm is due credit regardless, because it has made a pretty sweet engine.Under the bonnet of the Defender, it doesn’t sound quite as smooth or refined under lighter throttle loads than plenty of other straight-six oil-burners you could care to name, but it isn’t far off at all.