Next Land Rover Defender to get air springs - report

Next Land Rover Defender to get air springs – report

The next-generation Land Rover Defender is set to make it first public debut this September, Jaguar Land Rover has told CarAdvice.

“There will be something around Frankfurt in September. Whether it’s at the motor show or whether it’s an out of show event, we’re sorting that out at the moment,” said Jaguar Land Rover Australia’s general manager of communications Tim Krieger.

The next-generation 4X4 has been running road trials – officially acknowledged, at least – as early as last October, and we’ve even captured a since-deleted image of what could be the iconic nameplate’s interior. If accurate, this indicates a thorough overhaul of the Defender’s dashboard which will incorporate digitised instrumentation and a widescreen infotainment panel.

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My awesome camera dude/bear jerky and Coors swigger @benstanziale crawled under a Land Rover Defender Mule and got these shots of the fully independent rear end. I see a big fat aluminum control arms and air bags (air suspension). You see anything else? Was Land Rover happy? No, but what were they going to do? #hard #landrover #defender @landrover ????????????????????????

A post shared by Jonny Lieberman (@jonnylieberman) on Apr 11, 2019 at 8:42pm PDT

The new Defender could feature a suspension setup very similar to that of the Land Rover Discovery 5, with the possible inclusion of air suspension, according to an Instagram post by Motor Trend journalist Jonny Lieberman. This ties in with the company’s indication that this next-generation model will retain the off-roading capabilities it has been known for, while improving on-road refinement.

This is made possible with the use of the firm’s MLA vehicle architecture, which will also allow for the integration of the latest driver assistance and connectivity suites. The Defender’s overall silhouette is still distinctly squared-off, though certainly it has been thoroughly modernised from the discontinued Defender’s boxy lines of old.

GALLERY: 2019 Land Rover Defender 110 spyshots