Interestingly, restarting production of an entire chassis wasn’t the trickiest hurdle to overcome. “Believe it or not, the biggest challenge was a seatbelt bolt,” laughed Foster. “It’s such a unique size and thread, so you can’t just go and buy it – it was something that was engineered back in period.”
Handily, the team in Coventry have over 1.2 million records on site with their own personal archivist. “We’ll then take a look at [it] and evaluate all the standards and requirements on it,” Foster explained. “We’ve added new elements to it, such as the corrosion protection we’ve learned over the last 70 years of Land Rover.”
Restarting production of several items has other benefits, too; Classic tells us that it can now fulfill requests from Defender owners that were, until now, unable to source official parts. “The beauty of what we’re doing is that we’ve added another 200 parts back into [Defender] stores, and that number is growing and growing,” says Foster.
Another contemporary addition is the optional Recaro front bucket seats which, while certainly attractive and figure-hugging, are a bit of a juxtaposition for what is otherwise visually a subtle reimagining of the Defender.
This does, however, bring up the topic of customisation, of which prospective Classic V8 buyers largely have free reign. Defender purists might wince at the idea of diamond-cut alloys, but you can choose either black or white steel wheels – not to mention a plethora of modern and heritage colours, grille designs and countless interior upholstery combinations.
