Is daily driving a V8 a bad idea? I find out in a Land Rover Defender 90 V8

'It likes a drink,’ said ed-in-chief Gallagher as he handed me the key to the Defender. A few weeks later I’m beginning to understand what he meant, regular £115 hammerings of my credit card highlighting the reality of running a V8-engined barn-door-shaped SUV as your daily driver. Short journeys see 16mpg if you’re lucky, with 20-21 on middling trips. Anything over 22 is basically hypermiling.

Despite the regular forecourt trauma, the Defender 90 V8 is one of those gloriously unnecessary models that’s hard to justify but impossible to resist. First impressions are of a car that shamelessly taps into childhood Tonka Toy nostalgia thanks to satisfyingly stubby styling and the way it sits high on its 22-inch rims. It’s also stealthy, a pair of small V8 badges set low on the flanks and a quartet of modest-diameter tailpipes the only things that denote its status. Think of it as the anti-Urus.

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The three-door body is neat but, as you discover rather quickly, highly impractical. At least if you’re the ones trying to climb up into the rear passenger compartment. The tailgate that swings out rather than up can also be a pain if someone parks too close behind you. On the plus side there’s plenty of room for front and rear seat passengers – the same as in the longer 110, in fact.

The downside is a very tall, shallow boot that’s okay for a line of shopping bags, or perhaps a suitcase and a squashy bag. Pity the family dog that gets squeezed in there. I’d be curious to know how many people walk into a Land Rover dealer with their heart set on a 90 and come out having ordered a 110 because they can’t live with the shorter-wheelbase model’s compromises.

I ran a Jaguar F‑type P450 RWD a few years back (see evo 305) and there’s more than a little of that car in the way the Defender makes progress. The supercharged 5-litre V8 is a lovely engine and works very nicely with the eight-speed auto ’box. It’s more powerful here than in ‘my’ old Jag to the tune of 75bhp (making 518bhp in total), though that’s masked somewhat by a kerb weight of almost 2.5 tons. I know, I had to re-read that figure, too.

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Thus far, wintry weather has played to the Defender’s all-wheel-drive strengths. On a very early morning dash through snow and slush to attend the first Sunday Scramble of the year at Bicester Motion, it made light work of conditions that would be an ordeal for most cars. It might sound like a cliché, but the Defender just feels like nothing will faze it.

SUVs are seen as a scourge by many, but I’ve always rather enjoyed the best of them. The nice thing about the Defender is it seems more authentic than most and doesn’t try too hard. It’s fun too, with impressive reserves of performance and rough-and-tumble dynamics that make it fun to thread down a decent A‑ or B‑road. I’m looking forward to getting to know it better once the weather thaws.

This story was first featured in evo issue 332.

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