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The Long, Long Goodbye: Final Land Rover Defender Rolls Off the Line

You’d be forgiven for thinking that production of the Land Rover Defender ended some time ago. After all, the old-school 4×4 disappeared from the U.S. market in 1997, at which point it was already a relic. And we’ve seen multiple auto-show concepts of its replacement, as the company and its designers wring their hands over how, exactly, to follow up the iconic Landie. There were the obligatory Final Editions, and we did our own ode to the Defender, wherein we drove every generation in one day.

And yet, during all this time, Land Rover’s Solihull factory still was churning out fresh Defenders. Until today, that is. The last Land Rover Defender—in a fittingly age-amorphous pale-green hue—has rolled off the line, accompanied by the kind of pomp and circumstance the British do so well.

We expect this cataclysmic event has thrown the country into a fit of national mourning, given that the Defender is arguably even more British than either Big Ben or that soldier guy you see on gin bottles.

The vehicle has been in continuous production since 1948, with more than 2 million built. Originally known simply as the Land Rover Series I, and then the Series II—it didn’t acquire the Defender name until 1990—the off-roader has been built in numerous iterations: two-door softtop and hardtop, four-door station wagon, pickup truck, fire truck, snow plow, etc. The Land Rover’s reach expanded to the far corners of the world—even as Britain’s worldwide influence receded.

In a sense, then, the sun it setting on yet another aspect of the British Empire. But chin up, old boys. After all, how long can it be before some independent automaker—or even Jaguar Land Rover’s own SVO outfit—starts building “continuation” Defenders? Not long at all, we’d guess. Not long at all.

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The Long, Long Goodbye: Final Land Rover Defender Rolls Off the Line

The Long, Long Goodbye: Last Land Rover Defender Finally Rolls Off the Line

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VW’s Electric BUDD-e Concept—or Something Much Like It—Headed for Production

Volkswagen BUDD-e concept

Rocked by its diesel-emissions scandal, the VW Group is pivoting on its wheels and rushing to embrace battery-electric technology instead. So it wasn’t much of a surprise when the company attempted to change the conversation by rolling out the BUDD-e electric microvan concept at the Consumer Electronics Show earlier this year. And it’s only slightly less surprising that VW wants to put the BUDD-e, or a vehicle much like it, into production.

Volkswagen BUDD-e concept

Speaking to Britain’s Car magazine, Dr. Volkmar Tanneberger, head of electrical and electronic development at VW, said, “You will see a car that looks a lot like this, on the MEB [modular electric] platform, reach production. I can’t say exactly when, but 2020 or thereabouts.”

Volkswagen BUDD-e concept cutaway

“[The] basic idea is to develop a modular toolkit and take this flat-battery idea into serial production, one motor on the front, one motor on the rear,” Tanneberger added. As shown in the BUDD-e concept, the battery pack was a 101-kWh lithium-ion unit claimed to provide a range of 233 miles. It lives under the floor between the axles, which will be standard fare for MEB-based passenger cars and light-commercial vehicles.

The BUDD-e, then, will be only one of many EVs spun off this platform. As for VW billing it as the second coming of the Microbus, we’re not seeing a whole lot of resemblance between the two. And as much as we’d like to see a modern version of that iconic machine, VW’s overarching mission at the moment is to refashion itself as a company that puts EVs—rather than TDIs—front and center, so this little battery-powered microvan will have to do.

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Connie Kalitta Interview: We Pick the Brain of a Drag-Racing Legend

C/D: You certainly must be our only interviewee to have foiled a crazed hijacker.

CK: Christ, that was 20-some years ago. It was a guy who walked into my office and wanted to charter a Learjet to Washington, D.C. When we asked for a credit card, he opened his briefcase and pulled out a knife. At knifepoint, I led him into the jet but didn’t lock the door behind us. I knew the police would come—or I hoped. So he climbed into the right seat, and I started the engines, just idling. That’s when the state police parked their cruiser in front of us. Now the hijacker goes really berserk and I started wrestling with him to get the knife. I got cut up some. But before it got real bad, a cop pressed a gun to the guy’s head. READ MORE ››

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Four-Cylinder BMW 730i—It’s Not Coming Here, and We’re OK With That

2016 BMW 7-series

In BMW’s new math, four goes into seven—at least in some cases. BMW is putting a four-cylinder engine in its flagship new 7-series, but it’s not for the U.S. market. Instead, it’s buyers in Turkey who will be able to choose the new 730i (not pictured), with its turbocharged 2.0-liter four-cylinder making 258 horsepower and 295 lb-ft of torque. Somehow, we’re not so envious.

The 730i costs the equivalent of $210,000 in Turkey. Like many nations outside the U.S., Turkey charges an annual tax based on engine capacity, and so a 4.4-liter V-8 is not in the cards in that country. China, according to BMW Blog, is also on the list for the 730i. A long-wheelbase 730Li (remember, all U.S. 7s are long, even without the L designation) and a 730d, with the 3.0-liter turbodiesel six from the outgoing 740Ld, are also available.

The new 730i is effectively our upcoming 740e only without the plug-in hybrid element, which boosts total output to 321 horsepower. While we’re sure a rear-wheel drive four-cylinder 730i would chop a bit off the 4883-pound curb weight of the 750i xDrive we tested, it’s still a big car with a small engine.

Mercedes-Benz and Audi don’t offer four-cylinder engines in their flagship sedans, but Jaguar does. In India, Turkey, and a few other markets, the XJ comes standard with a 2.0-liter turbo four that makes 240 horsepower. Here in the States, the closest equivalent might be the Cadillac CT6, which comes with a 265-hp 2.0-liter turbo four—along with a more powerful V-6 and a twin-turbo V-6.

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Happy Birthday, Automobile! Karl Benz’s Wheeled Tricycle Is 130 Years Old Today

Like many late-20th-century kids reared in the industrial orbit of Detroit, the standard line tossed about by our well-meaning but somewhat uninterested teachers was that “Henry Ford was the father of the gasoline-powered automobile.” They were wrong of course; Ford was far from first, even in the U.S. If our noble educators had removed their rust-belt blinders even for a minute, they would have made the distinction between popularizing the gasoline-powered automobile and actually being credited with creating it. Because when it comes to claiming the title of first, no other single individual has a stronger case than Karl Benz, whose three-wheeled, self-propelled, gasoline-powered “Patent-Motorwagen” vehicle first rolled under its own power in 1885.

Confident he was on to something big, Benz wisely filed for a patent on January 29th of 1886, registering the rig as a “gas-powered vehicle” with the German Imperial Patent Office in Berlin under the number DRP 37435. Although not uncontested (Gottlieb Daimler, the Duryea brothers, George Selden, and countless others were on similar timelines), the Benz patent remains the closest official date for the birth of the modern automobile. And today marks its 130th birthday.

Benz first showed the vehicle, which for obvious reasons earned the name “Patentwagen” or “Patent-Motorwagen” or even simply “patent motor car,” in public on July 3, 1886, when he took it for a spin on the Ringstrasse in Mannheim, Germany. Powered by a rear-mounted 954-cc, one-cylinder four-stroke engine producing less than 1 horsepower, the Patentwagen was capable of cruising at up to 9.9 mph with the engine turning approximately 400 rpm. Constructed of a steel tubular chassis and wooden slats with a chain drive and large spoke wheels, one wonders if Karl Benz realized his design sensibilities would, more than a century later, serve as an embryonic puff of inspiration for a burgeoning steampunk movement.

Although Benz’s short trip around Mannheim may have helped cement the vehicle’s provenance, legend has it that it was an unscheduled excursion by Benz’s wife Bertha in 1888 that established the motor vehicle’s everyday utility. Benz had continued to improve the vehicle, and by 1888 had completed the third revision, logically dubbed the Model III. In August of that same year, Bertha, accompanied by sons Eugene and Richard, gave Benz the slip and embarked on a long-distance (approximately 120-mile) journey the Model III, traveling from Mannheim to Pforzheim and back to visit her mother, in the process proving the motorcar’s practical application in day-to-day life. (Interested parties can trace their travels via the Bertha Benz Memorial Route in Baden-Wurttemberg.)

Eventually, Benz would connect with Gottlieb Daimler—who also had a motorized carriage in 1886, but alas, not the first patent—and the two would go on to raise some serious hell in the automotive world, setting records, pioneering safety advances, and generally making names for themselves in the nascent auto industry. Today, Carl Benz’s patent motor car and Gottlieb Daimler’s motorized carriage make up the first exhibit on view to visitors of the Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart.

And what became of the original patent filing number DRP 37435? It’s still around, currently in the Untied Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organizations, “Memory of the World Program,” sharing space with such esteemed documents as the Magna Carta, Gutenberg Bible, and Johann Sebastian Bach’s Mass in B Minor. Like my schoolteachers always said, “Save your paperwork–you might need it in the future.”

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Happy Birthday, Automobile! Karl Benz’s Wheeled Tricycle Is 130 Years Old Today

Carl Benz and 1886 Benz Patent-Motorwagen

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