Amid all the news about revived and redesigned off-roaders like the Ford Bronco and Ram TRX here in the United States, the new Land Rover Defender has perhaps been a little bit overlooked among the hardcore off-road crowd. Sure, the new Bronco has proven itself as a legit Jeep Wrangler competitor on the Rubicon Trail and the TRX will feature a beastly Hellcat V8 under the hood. The new Defender might at first, seem pretty expensive and luxurious, in comparison.
Still a Wrangler Rubicon or a Bronco can easily eclipse $50,000 or even $60,000 from a dealer—not including all the aftermarket mods. Meanwhile, the new Defender starts at $50,000 and has more ground clearance and can ford deeper streams than a Rubicon, so perhaps it deserves some more attention. Of course, for the rest of the world, the old Defender is a ubiquitous SUV, so it only makes sense that the UK-based YouTube channel CarWow recently decided to pit old versus new in an off-road tug of war to see whether Land Rover has managed to up its game with the Defender's new generation.
Old Defender Stats
Host Mat Watson finds himself behind the wheel of the 2014 Defender, which is equipped with a 2.2-liter turbodiesel engine that he states produces a measly 122 horsepower but a respectable 265 lb-ft of torque. Those stats should come as no surprise, as this is a boxy, borderline-Spartan off-roader that's about as far from a modern Land Rover as it gets. It has no traction control, a manual transmission, a transfer case with low-range four-wheel drive, and a good-old-fashioned manually locking differential system. All that metal translates to a curb weight of just over 4,500 pounds.
New Defender Stats
The new Defender, meanwhile, features a wide range of electronic nannies that better allow its drivetrain to dominate any form of terrain. In this case, that drivetrain consists of a 240-horsepower turbodiesel engine displacing 2.0 liters and producing 317 lb-ft of torque. It weighs just over 5,300 pounds, which may be the primary advantage in this traction challenge taking place on what looks like a slippery grass field. The older Defender does enter the competition with knobby tires, which could help it overcome power and weight deficits—watch the video to see whether old can beat new at the old-fashioned game of tug of war.
Sources: youtube.com and facebook.com.