Autoweek.nl found patent images Land Rover filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for the coming Defender 130. We got our last look at the 130 trim in July 2021 when it was wearing skin-tight camouflage while testing near its home territory in England. The patent line drawings remove almost all of the suspense about what’s coming, if any suspense remained. The one difference that we spot in the drawings compared to the Defender 90 and 110 is a tweaked fender vent. The vents on the two smaller models are all black mesh, whereas there’s a decorative element contained within the vents on the 130 in the patent artwork. The camouflaged truck did without these vents, so we’ll see what arrives at launch.
The 130 will ride on the same 118.9-inch wheelbase of the 110, adding 14 inches of length to the body behind the rear wheels, for a total length of about 211.6 inches including the spare wheel on the tailgate. That’s almost one inch longer than a 2022 Chevrolet Tahoe. The Defender stretch makes room for another row of seating that can fit two more adults comfortably, for seven in total, unlike the contingency third row in the Defender 110. The stretch will also reduce the 130’s departure angle when off-roading. The exceptionally curt tail end of the Defender 110 creates a 37.7-degree breakover angle before maxing out the air suspension, a trick that raises the departure angle to 40 degrees. Our guess is the Defender 130 will be looking up at the Jeep Gladiator’s 26-degree departure angle.
It’s not clear how much the Defender 130 will need to go off-road, nor if Land Rover even expects it to do so. The automaker classifies the lankiest Defender as the “premium explorer” of the range that will “will hit a sweet spot in North America, China and also the Middle East, which we’re not yet touching,” while the 110 is the “definitive Defender” and the 90 is the “halo, image icon.” Autocar believes the 130 will “be available in top-end trims only.” If that happens, we’ll be looking at a model that could start close to six figures and go up from there; the Defender 110X starts at just over $89,000, and it has the Defender V8 and Defender V8 Carpathian Edition above.
After the 130 hits the market, there’s more powder in Land Rover’s Defender cannon. We anticipate a dual-cab pickup version, there are rumors of an SVR model motivated by a BMW-sourced 4.4-liter V8 with 600 horsepower, and an even more upscale trim that would borrow the Range Rover’s MLA bones. The debut should happen between this February and August, based on comments Land Rover’s CFO made last year.
For more on the Land Rover Defender:
<style>.embed-container { position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; height: 0; overflow: hidden; max-width: 100%; } .embed-container iframe, .embed-container object, .embed-container embed { position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; }</style><div class=’embed-container’><iframe src=’https://www.youtube.com/embed/sDssRN0lYWY’ frameborder=’0′ allowfullscreen></iframe></div>
