I Bought a New 2020 Land Rover Defender! (And Here's Why)

this is a new 2020 land rover defender and in fact it's my new 2020 land rover defender i bought this new defender to replace my kia stinger it is the first new car i have ever purchased the most expensive daily driver car i have ever bought by far and today i'm going to show you around my new defender and explain why i chose it [Music] before i get started big news i am selling my kia stinger on cars and bids which is my new enthusiast car auction site for cool cars from the modern era my new defender is replacing my stinger so the stinger is live right now being auctioned on cars and bids with no reserve you can check out the auction by clicking the link in the description below tomorrow on my second channel more doug demiro i'll sum up my ownership of the stinger after one year all of the highlights the drawbacks basically everything i thought of the stinger after a year driving it anyway for now back to the defender so let's talk new defender as you all know the new defender has been big news in a year of big news for off-roaders the new ford bronco the new electric hummer and the continued massive success of vehicles like the jeep wrangler and the toyota 4runner but the defender has been a bit controversial unlike the jeep and the bronco land rover chose a more modern direction for its iconic defender brand name this decision has upset a lot of people who own the old land rover defender the original who wanted the new version to be more old school more rough around the edges less modern interestingly i own a 1997 land rover defender the old school model body on frame v8 leak soil everywhere drives like a piece of farm equipment which is basically what it is so you'd think that i would cling to that heritage and denounce the new defender for being too modern too updated but clearly that isn't the case and today i'm going to explain myself first i'm going to show you around my new defender and explain my choices i ordered this vehicle from the factory like this so everything here is my doing this was not some stock unit on a dealer lot i chose it all and i'm going to tell you why i did some of the things that i did then i'm going to show you a few interesting quirks i've discovered since owning my dune defender and then i'm going to explain most importantly why i chose the new defender in the first place so let's get started all right i'm going to start off by showing you around my new land rover defender showing you some of the options i chose the decisions i made like i said i ordered this car so i chose all of this stuff and i want to start with the color this is pangea green with a white roof you can choose the roof color it can either be body colored like the green or white or i think they offer black as well but i went with white now as for the body color pangea green i always get my cars in the press color the original launch color in all the ads the instagram posts the posters and if you look back through my prior cars you will see that i always do this the red kia stinger the blue and white dodge viper the yellow land rover defender the blue and white ford gt and now this and many others too i just think that color always looks the best and because it's in all the photos it's how i come to see the car and in the defender's case that meant green as for the white roof that is a nod to the old school defenders defenders in the 80s the 90s regardless of what body color they were they often had a white roof so i chose that to kind of recall the old school defender and i think the combination of green with the white roof really does look fantastic next up let's talk wheels these are 20-inch alloy wheels now i really wanted steel wheels really really really really really wanted steel wheels i felt it really gave the defender sort of a cool work truck off-road utilitarian vibe i couldn't believe they offered steel wheels in 2020 on a new landover i wanted them so badly and in fact about 80 of my email correspondence with the dealership where i ordered this car was about the steel wheels but land rover doesn't offer the steel wheels with the six cylinder engine the reason is the six cylinder requires larger brakes and the steel wheels don't fit around those brakes and so you have to get alloys and i went back and forth on this for so long absolutely agonized over it because the steelies look so good but in the end i chose this wheel now i think the new defender has some truly terrible wheel designs absolutely awful and i think this is really the only good looking wheel aside from the steel wheel and the larger 22-inch wheel but that's very expensive and you can't really take that off-roading so this is the one i went with i think it looks great but all the other wheels are a disaster especially the wheel in the hse trim level this one you're supposed to want this wheel more than the one in mind the se model but i hated this wheel design so much that i actually avoided paying more for the higher trim level and i went with these instead i really think this is pretty much the only great wheel design in the new defender aside from the fantastic steelies which unfortunately i couldn't get with the six cylinder so you're thinking okay well why don't you just get the four cylinder engine and then you could have your steel wheels and i considered this for a long time in fact i originally ordered my new defender in a totally base spec ultra low option configuration with the four cylinder the steel wheels all of the off-roading accessories and nothing else cloth seats front bench seat steel wheels it was a total strip down build with a sticker price of under sixty thousand dollars which is pretty impressive for this vehicle that's basically no options but then i drove the six cylinder version i reviewed it a few months ago drove the six cylinder and it was fantastic and i just realized truthfully for my use case for this vehicle which i will explain a little bit later when i discuss why i chose the defender the use case that i have the six cylinder just makes more sense the 4 cylinder does 0 to 60 and 7 something it has about 300 horsepower but that's not a huge figure for a vehicle this size the 6 cylinder does 0 to 60 in the low 5 second range which is pretty impressive about 400 horsepower it's just more muscular and i decided in the end that compromising on that much power just so i could have steel wheels wasn't really worth it especially because i'm sure there will be aftermarket steel wheels available that look exactly the same if i choose to go that route in the future so i went with the six cylinder but i still ended up with that low option utilitarian build that i wanted including the front bench seat in this area of the new defender you have two options you can get a regular center console and you can add a meridian sound system and a refrigerator in here and a wireless charging system or you can go cheap and you can get an actual third seat in the middle with its own seat belts its own backrest its own headrest and then you can have three across front seating like old school american cars this has to be one of the very last vehicles left with a front bench seat with three seat belts maybe the last vehicle left aside from a few pickup trucks that still offer it but i love it and i had to do it and it feels so defendery so off-road old-school like its original purpose and so i did that i also got the cloth seats now you can see the seat is partially leather in the center that's because it's heated and cooled and most automakers won't do that with cloth but you can pay extra to get full leather seats or you can get these partial leather partial cloth and again i feel like cloth is more in keeping with the defender's utilitarian off-roading purpose and so i have the base cloth trimmed seats even though this is a brand new land rover and i love it next up another big item i did to my build was these things these plastic wheel arch extensions they call them that go over the wheel i think these are crucial to how the new defender looks the new defender's styling has generated some controversy in part because it just doesn't look that rugged that utilitarian and i think the regular ones without these wheel arch extensions look so awkward and weird and dainty but also muscular at the same time and it just doesn't work these were essential this is a dealer installed option and i told the dealer i don't want to pick up the car i don't even want to see an image of the car when it arrives until you have installed these wheel arch extensions which give the new defender a more rugged look when these are in place you can see it loses some of that awkwardness where you have a large visual like hole here and you're not really sure if it's an off-roader or a mom crossover to take the kids to soccer practice i really think these enhance the look dramatically and i think everyone with a new defender should get these wheel arch extensions to me it totally changes how this thing looks and it brings it into how it should have looked originally they shouldn't even be selling these without them one other dealer installed option i got was an air compressor in back you can see this little piece in the cargo area with this dial at the top and then also it comes with this land rover bag you open it up and there's this long orange hose in here this is for putting air in your tire so i go off-roading pretty frequently and when you do that you let the air out of your tires so they can crawl over obstacles easier but then when you're done you have to like drive for miles with deflated tires back to a gas station and try to find one that has an air compressor i really wanted one built into the car and this has it so this way i'm done off-roading i can air up my tires on the side of the road and just drive home without the difficulty of going to the gas station and finding somewhere with an air compressor all right so next up i'm going to explain why i chose the defender specifically which i suspect a lot of you will be wondering about but first i want to show you a few interesting quirks i've noticed since owning the new defender i did a full review of the new defender a few months ago where i showed you all of the quirks and features but after owning the car for a bit i've come up with a few more that i hadn't noticed but i want to start with the front bench seat which was not in the defender i reviewed i want to show you how it works now when it's down you can see it's just cupholders frankly one could mistake it for a center console it looks pretty standard but you push it up and then it is in fact a seat now you can see at the floor you don't have a lot of foot space here this isn't really meant for a large full-sized adult it's more of a kid place or maybe i'll put my dog up here but it does have a plastic floor so when you do have your shoes down here it won't get something important muddy like carpet now as for the seat itself if you want to put it down you pull on this little loop next to the bottom of the seat and then you can fold the backrest down and then it goes back to being an armrest and cupholders when it's up you can see it is quite tall so you may be wondering doesn't that just block your mirror so you can't see anything which is true except that i got the clear sight rear view mirror which means the mirror is actually just a camera mounted in the back of the car so i don't see this seat blocking my mirror i just see what's behind me meaning that i can have someone sitting here fully blocking what would normally be your vision out of the car but i can see just fine because the mirror camera i love this mirror camera feature it was crucial to me when ordering the new defender i've really wanted it and i'm thrilled that i have it a couple of other interesting quirks i've noticed one is at night when you open up the doors this is the projection onto the ground like a square that says defender with the defender facing forward this is ridiculous and these projections on the ground have all gotten stupid but it is a nice little gimmick that reminds you of your defender-ness when you approach or leave the vehicle at night and i think it is kind of cool if a bit over the top next up another feature that was really important to me in the new defender was something called wade sensing i decided if i was going to get the new defender i would want to get every single off-road option and so i did and that includes wade sensing which will measure exactly how much water you are currently in if you're driving through a little lake or a stream or whatever it will tell you how high it is up on your new defender so you can figure out if you're in danger of going too high and that way you don't flood the engine or destroy anything because it is literally sensing your water depth as you were driving through water which is a really really cool off-roading feature except that i now live in southern california where there is no water anywhere you go off-roading in the past on the east coast where i used to live you would go through water when you were off-roading it would be very helpful but now maybe not so helpful still i wanted it because you never know i do off-road and i will be taking this off-road i figured maybe it will be nice sometime in the future if i'm ever somewhere where there's water again next up some more quirks i've noticed are back here for one thing the new defender has a swing out tailgate most vehicles that have a spare tire mounted in the back do have a swing out tailgate because it would be too heavy to lift the tailgate up like in a normal suv so this one swings out and one thing i quickly realized owning this vehicle you want to make sure there's no one behind you when you swing it out because it opens pretty far so if you're parallel parked you might not be able to swing it out all the way or even most of the way in order to get stuff back here it's something you have to be careful about and you have to warn other people if they're loading something in the car to be careful about it because they wouldn't normally notice that most vehicles don't have a tailgate like this now when you get into the cargo area a few interesting quirks in here for one this cargo cover i hate it you have to undo it in many different places to make it go away i wish it was one of those covers that you just rolled back very easily but for some reason they didn't do that here i guess the theory is you can put stuff on this cover and it won't break but i don't plan to do that and i just wish it was a little bit easier to operate so you didn't have to clip it in in like six different places in order to secure it but aside from that stupid cargo cover there is a lot to like back here now by getting the front bench seat i couldn't get the third row seat in the back which i think is a big mistake land rover makes you choose whether you want the front bench or the third row i want both why can't i have an eight-seater new defender if that's what i want i think it's a crazy decision that they make you choose but i chose the front bench mainly because the third row seat is pretty cramped in the back of the new defender very very small mostly just good for kids that's also true of the front bench but at least that has the novelty factor anyway i mentioned the third row because the safari windows are back here you look up from the cargo air and you can see these windows that are like in the roof pointing out to each side now if you have the third row your very back seat passengers can enjoy these windows they'll think they're really cool but even without it everybody who gets in this new defender remarks on how much they love these safari windows and back i think it's a really cool feature i'm so glad land rover brought it back and i think it's just awesome all right next up i'm gonna move on to the more important part maybe the most important part which is why did i get the new defender this is the question everybody's going to want to know i showed you the options i chose the color a few interesting quirks but people are going to be asking why this vehicle why the new defender i drive basically everything why have i chosen this vehicle well obviously it started because i have the old defender so like a lot of defender fans i was very curiously awaiting the debut of the new one which happened about a year and a half ago at the same time i love boxy suvs in fact when i bought my e63 amg station wagon almost four years ago i mentioned in that video that what i really wanted was a boxy suv with modern technology and good fuel economy that drove kind of like a car but at the time it didn't exist no one was making that sort of vehicle and boxy suvs in general aren't really being made anymore at all but i love them and you can see that in my car history my current land rover defender my mercedes g-wagon cabriolet i had an old mercedes g wagon years ago i had a range rover classic i had an o6 range over all boxy suvs and i personally don't love the look of all these new sloping swooshy lines on suvs i like my suvs utilitarian boxy truck like just like the old school but the problem is no one is really making boxy suvs anymore this shape doesn't really work with all the fuel economy regulations and automakers striving for better gas mileage boxy is kind of out there just aren't that many of them and then the new defender is revealed and i'm thinking there's a boxy suv and it's a defender which of course i already liked and it has all the latest technology and features and it's more comfortable than my old defender it's like a real rational vehicle but it still carries on the defender name now i admit there are a few boxy suvs on the market you're probably wondering why i didn't choose those let's start with the mercedes g-wagon which also has all the latest tech drives like a car and is boxy but the truth is two problems with the g-wagon number one i can't really afford it the newest g-wagon starts like 130 thousand dollars they're still getting over sticker there's a ton of demand i'm not going down that road the other issue with the g to me is just the appearance and you drive that around and you just look like the kind of person who has a g wagon and i don't really want to be associated with that anyway now i should mention i have a g rocket but it's the convertible version and it doesn't really have that in-your-face kind of look to i just it's not my thing and it's too expensive anyway even if it was my thing so the other big boxy suv on the market is the jeep wrangler but it just doesn't drive as well as i need it to for the purposes that i have this is far more comfortable and far less removable off-roady kind of toy this is more of an actual on-road vehicle which brings me to the biggest question i know everyone is going to be asking why didn't you get the new ford bronco and that is an excellent question the bronco is like the new defender but basically better it's more capable off-road the retro styling is cooler it has all these cool little gimmicks and quirks and i love it but it doesn't work for my purposes for two reasons number one i already possess two convertible off-roader suvs i have my land rover defender two-door convertible impractical off-roader suv and i have my mercedes g-wagon convertible convertible off-roader impractical two-door suv i do not need nor do i want another off-roader two-door impractical convertible sd i have no interest in that i have maxed out but more importantly and this is the main reason why this ended up being my choice over the other boxy suvs the new bronco won't work for my purposes this is important i use my daily driver vehicle for basically one thing and that is to drive all over southern california to film these videos i can spend some days six seven eight hours in the car driving four hours one way filming and then driving four hours back all over southern california i've gone to las vegas hours past los angeles it's very far i need something that is comfortable that is high-tech that is smooth and luxurious i am in the car a ton and i do not want the new bronco which i know will be wonderful as kind of an off-roader toy type vehicle but i need a capable on-road nice smooth luxurious car not something that's completely removable i think the bronco will be a great off-road fun toy but for long distance driving which is pretty much all i need i don't need that and that's the same reason why i didn't get the two-door new defender it's not out yet but even if it was i would have gotten the four-door i wanted something that was more practical more daily usable then that's what this is now i suspect most of my viewers will understand that aspect of my purchase but a big question you might have is why did i spend so much money on this vehicle sticker price was around 73 000 for the new defender as i built it and i have previously made it clear that that is well in excess of my usual daily driver car budget in fact when i bought my kia stinger i mentioned that 40 000 was kind of my max i always felt like 40 grand you could get everything you want new or used and i've never really gone higher than that for a daily driver car i have spent more money than that on fun second weekend special cars that i know would preserve their value but for a daily driver car to spend 73 000 plus taxes it's insane it's a terrible financial decision and you will get destroyed on depreciation and i have always rallied against making decisions like that there is only one way in my opinion you can justify reasonably spending that much money on a new car and that would be if you plan to own it for a long time and i do i know people are gonna say i'm crazy for buying a first year of a new land rover and thinking i will own it for a while but i promise you i will the original warranty on this car is four years fifty thousand miles i bought a land rover extended warranty for seven years and a hundred thousand miles which is always a terrible idea because nobody keeps the car that long and you end up just wasting your money but i won't this will be my daily driver through the conclusion of that warranty i promise you that now a lot of people are out there shaking your heads chuckling there's no way he owns it that long he switches cars all the time but that's not really true i do get a lot of fun special cars on the side but my daily driver cars i stick with them for a while my previous range rover i bought in 2012 and i used it as my daily driver for almost seven years and i still have it i share it with a friend of mine out on the east coast after that i got that mercedes e63 amg wagon i had that for three years through the full conclusion of its warranty and i only sold that so i would have a first car to sell on cars and bids my new website the kia i've only had for a year but that's kind of a blip in my usual pattern and i did that because i knew this was coming and i wanted to try something different for a year until it arrived and so i had the kia but this is gonna stick around for the long haul now there's also a contingent of you surely laughing at the idea that this will even last that long that it will even be a reliable vehicle for the long haul and i'll probably just want to ditch it and i'm very aware of the problems that tfl is having with their new defender on their channel but i'm not particularly worried about it remember this is my fourth land rover i had a range rover classic which was a disaster i had an o6 range rover which was pretty bad i have my defender now and now this i know what to expect and i am warrantied up bring it on this will be my vehicle for years to come and i'm covered if anything happens not too worried about it those are the two big factors that contributed to me choosing the new defender as my next car it's a boxy utilitarian capable off-roader suv like the old defender but it's also more luxurious so that i can drive it long distances when i need to and the other big one is i'm going to keep it for a long time so i can justify spending all that much money on a new car and indeed a new car this is my first ever new car my kia stinger i was the first registered owner but the car was about two years old and they had started the warranty like a year and a half before i bought it so it wasn't technically new but this is picked it up with like 30 miles on the odometer and that's a really cool feeling and by the way i do want to give a thank you to hohen jaguar land rover in the san diego area my local land rover dealership actually here in carlsbad they held my hand throughout all of my questions about the options ordering process and there were many of them they ordered this car a long time ago we waited through covid as production was delayed then it finally shipped it finally arrived they didn't give me some big discount to say this or anything but they did have excellent customer service and i really appreciate hoenn jaguar land rover and here is a picture of me taking delivery of my first new car ever my new defender it was a very very happy day so thanks again to hoenn jaguar land rover a few other things i want to cover number one the old defender crowd when i posted my review of the new defender a few months ago a lot of my fellow old defender owners were very upset with me at being a traitor for liking the new defender this isn't a real defender they said well i don't feel that way this new defender is faster than the old defender even though it doesn't have a big v8 under the hood it's more practical than the old defender and it's more capable off-road than the old defender in every measurable way and it's not a disaster i love my old defender but it's a nightmare it's loud it's crashing it's rough it's not gonna come back in the modern era so just get that out of your mind i like having my old defender but i do not want a new version of my old defender it would be rough and horribly inefficient and horribly low on tech and nobody would really buy it i like the fact that they've modernized it i really do and speaking of off-road capability even though i'm gonna primarily use this as a daily driver i do plan to off-road it periodically and i will have a video of me off-roading the new defender soon on my second channel even though it is my very expensive new car and i'm a little bit nervous i'm going to do it because that's what i do i like to use my cars and this one is very usable and so that's the new land rover defender my new land rover defender i love this vehicle there was a period after i ordered it where i wasn't really sure if i had made the right choice but after spending a few days with it driving it around really using it i am absolutely certain that this is the car for me i love the boxy styling i love the updated technology and i love the fact that they've carried on the defender brand name which of course i'm really into since i have the old one i will keep you updated about my defender ownership experience on my second channel more doug demiro so watch and periodically i'll tell you how it's going if i've had any problems what i've been up to with it and i do plan to take it off-roading soon and in the meantime head over to cars and bids and check out the auction where i'm selling my kia stinger because i now very much need to sell that in order to make room for this [Music] you

Channel: Doug DeMuro

Views: 2,125,996

Keywords: land rover defender, 2020 land rover defender, new defender, new land rover defender, 2020 defender, doug demuro, demuro, doug de muro

Id: x97uTUHlGw4

Length: 27min 38sec (1658 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 10 2020