Land Rover Defender - Reliability and safety
Safety isn’t an issue for the Land Rover Defender; the brand is improving in reliability rankings
From just looking at the Land Rover Defender, you’d think its chunky and robust design would mean it is virtually unbreakable. Although it didn’t appear in the latest 2024 Driver Power survey, our own experience confirms it feels as well-screwed together and reliable as you’d hope for. Owners’ feedback about the brand is showing signs of improvement, too, with Land Rover moving up from 22nd position (out of 29 brands) in 2021 to 14th spot in 2022 and 2023, then rising again into tenth spot in 2024.
The Defender comes with a host of safety kit and active systems designed to help avoid a collision, and Euro NCAP was sufficiently impressed to award the model a full five-star rating.
Standard equipment includes adaptive cruise control to keep you a safe distance from the vehicle ahead, and a Lane Keep Assist system to keep you within your lane on the motorway. In town, there’s Auto Emergency Braking to mitigate or avoid low-speed collisions with other vehicles and road users, along with a Traffic Sign Recognition to warn you of speed limit changes. Being such a large car, blind-spot warning is standard to let you know of other vehicles alongside you if you go to change lanes; plus, there’s a rear-cross traffic monitoring system to warn you of vehicles crossing from behind when you have to reverse out onto a main road. Land Rover has also added the Secure Tracker Pro to all Defenders, which integrates authentication technology into the key fob. An alert will be sent within minutes if your car is stolen with non-authorised keys.
| Key standard safety features | Euro NCAP safety ratings |
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Warranty
Land Rover offers a three-year/unlimited mileage warranty, with the option to extend cover, at extra cost, for up to ten years and 100,000 miles. There’s also three years’ free roadside recovery.
Both of these are very similar to what you’ll find from BMW, but are quite a bit shorter than the up to 10 years or 100,000 miles of cover you can get with a Toyota or Lexus.
Servicing
Land Rover offers individual fixed-price Service Plans. You can either pay monthly or as a one-off payment, and if you decide to sell your vehicle, any remaining Service Plan balance can be transferred to a new model or refunded.
