There’s a specific kind of collector who doesn’t just buy one of something. He buys the whole set. Land Rover Classic has just revealed a four-car commission built for exactly that person. It’s a matching family of Classic Defender V8s in four iconic body styles, all finished in the same paint, all built to the same brief, all destined for the same very large garage. With it, Land Rover Classic continues to expand its remanufacturing program, considering it built the last new “old” Defender in 2016.
The commission consists of a quartet, covering the 90 Station Wagon, 90 Soft Top, 110 Station Wagon, and for the first time, a 110 Double Cab Pick-Up, which makes its Works Bespoke debut. The 90 Hard Top is also now open for order, meaning Land Rover Classic is essentially rebuilding every body style the original Defender ever came in, at least for regular civilians to buy. Piece by piece, variant by variant, they’re putting the whole family back together.
The paint is what will stop traffic, though. All four cars wear a shade called Spectral Green, a colour-shifting finish that moves between green, purple, and gold depending on the light and your viewing angle. Each vehicle spent close to 400 hours in Land Rover Classic’s paint facility at Coventry, a number that starts to make sense when you realise the same finish extends to the 18-inch diamond-turned Sawtooth alloys, exterior badges, and interior fascia panels. It’s thorough, borderline obsessive, really. Contrast comes via an Icy White roof, expedition cage, and hand-painted coachlines, while the cabin is finished in Bridge of Weir Vanilla leather with green contrast stitching throughout.
Under the hood, every Classic Defender V8 runs Land Rover’s naturally aspirated 5.0-litre V8 producing 405PS and 515Nm, paired to an eight-speed ZF automatic. The donor vehicles are all original Solihull-built Defenders from 2012 to 2016, stripped back and rebuilt from scratch. A new 9-inch touchscreen with wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto is now available as an option, bringing the only meaningful nod to the present day.
Of course, pricing isn’t published. When the Land Rover Defender Works V8 was last on sale, it was priced at over $200,000. It’s a safe bet these bespoke Defenders are well past that figure now. Just think about that: someone spent what is likely over a million dollars recreating the complete Defender family, years after they stopped producing them. How’s that for obsession?
