Steve Cropley: You don't need to head off road for the new Defender to impress
As lockdown ebbs, Cropley finally got the chance to spend some quality time with the latest Landie
This week, Steve savours some me time with the new Defender, ponders the difficulty of launching GT cars in lockdown and ponders the fall of King Mondeo.
*Monday*
My first proper chance to bond with a new Land Rover Defender, and what a superb creation it turns out to be. The example I’m punting is a short-wheelbase 90 SE powered by the D250 (247bhp) 3.0-litre Ingenium six-cylinder diesel and equipped with air suspension. It also has the bog-basic 18in white steel wheels (the best, to me) plus off-road tyres, rubber mats and a snorkel, and is thus prepared for rougher treatment than it’ll get in my hands. What I’m most impressed by is the first-level stuff – the quality, the design inside and out, the powertrain refinement, the creamy torque, the accurate steering, the suspension’s quiet, long-travel bump absorption and, the biggest surprise of all, the cushioned quietness of the tyres on any surface. This weekend, I’ll be driving.
*Tuesday*
How on earth do you launch a 650bhp GT car to an action-starved community of customers and hacks when they can’t even walk around it, let alone hear or drive it? Bentley this week chose the media centre at the scenic Anglesey Circuit as a studio for its launch of the third-generation Continental GT Speed, where CEO Adrian Hallmark and chief engineer Matthias Rabe made live presentations electronically, and took questions the same way. It worked perfectly. Although rain beat against the big windows that formed the backdrop, there was enough of a view of freedom across the circuit, plus periodic aerial views, to make the whole production much more novel and memorable than a factory-based event would have been. As a result, the new Speed made a unique entry into the motoring world. Covid-19 may be a curse but it also breeds impressive innovation.
*Wednesday*
If there were an award for the decade’s most crass, ill-judged piece of broadcast nonsense, it would surely have to go to the ‘Go Left’ radio jingle currently being spread about by Highways England, evidently as a way of saving our lives on its so-called smart motorways.
On my reading, it suggests that if your car unexpectedly conks, and there’s no junction or refuge area handy, all you have to do is to ‘Go Left’ and bring yourself to a halt in the nearside lane – for want of a hard shoulder – then abandon your car through the passenger door and scarper up the bank. From there, you can watch with interest as onrushing trucks generate clouds of tyre smoke swerving around your lifeless pride and joy until one of them rear-ends it at the full 56mph, reducing it to a carpet of shattered glass and fist-sized parcels of torn metal. A chain of similar collisions (with strong prospects of fatalities) will then ensue, closing the motorway for hours. Not everyone will see it, however. The politicians allowing a catastrophe will be looking the other way.
*Thursday*
Ford has decided to drop the Mondeo in Europe next year and it’s hard to know how to respond to such news. Given that this fine car played a huge role in the 1990s lives of both Ford and Autocar, an automatic reaction might be to dissolve into paroxysms of sadness. But given that sales have dropped from 86,000 in 2001 to 2400 last year, I prefer to think the market has given its opinion, a distinguished machine has done its job and the company is right to move on. Mondeo lovers still have a year to buy their dream car, anyway…
The Mondeo was the emblem of Ford’s 1993 discovery, via the inspiration of engineer Richard Parry-Jones, that great driving dynamics could be appreciated by anyone who drove a car. This then radical notion spread (and is retained) in every Euro Ford. Autocar’s launch story, headed ‘Mondeo is king!’, is believed to have boosted Ford stock on Wall Street. Great days, but now we look to the future.
*And another thing...*
Last week’s suggestion that the Toyota GR Yaris takes me back to the sportier breed of Alfasud is reinforced by this cute warning on the dashboard, not to cane the engine when cold. In the Sud, a little light did the same thing.
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