I was so wrong, having been shown around the new variants at DVD 2026 by James Tooley, JLR Vehicle integration manager at DVD 2026 where they unveiled three more of the required variants, including crucially that pick-up version. So let’s dial it back and say what exactly my scepticism was based upon – there’s two fundamental aspects to it…
The old Defender was long in the tooth and well past its sell by date, Toyota, Nissan, Ford and VW all had pickups that surpassed the Land Rover on the road and equalled it off road. Yet a sense of nostalgia surrounds the vehicle, it’s a cool classic to own and is inextricably bound up with a sense of green wellies and flag waving ‘Britishness’.
Nostalgia doesn’t win wars, it’s a dangerous delusion along the line of ‘oh well, we’ve always done it like this’. Even JLR had given up on it, their modern Defender gives a nod to its heritage but is unashamedly aimed at the luxury market.
So the JLR announcement of their intention of entering the LMV tender process induced something of a double take. It’s a very capable vehicle, but seemed squarely aimed at the school run for the urban set. The modern defender is a monocoque chassis, which most cars are these days as it combines ease of manufacture with the rigidity needed to make vehicles really safe in collision situations. The LMV tender wants nine versions on a basic platform, which seems much easier to do with a ladder chassis that separates running gear from body panels and windows. Surely a monocoque structure is inherently weakened if you chop into it and remove bits. So just how are you going to make a pickup version? James patiently destroyed each and every one of my gripes…
He acknowledges that the Defender carries 77 years of military heritage and that many assumed that story ended with the old model. “We’ve had 77 years with the military, so it’d be rude not to try and continue that.” He’s blunt about the misconceptions: “Everybody thinks it’s an expensive chelsea tractor… but all of the old L316 requirements for the military vehicle came into this new Defender Wolf Series II, and we improved them all to make this car. This is a very, very capable vehicle.”
That claim isn’t just marketing. The Paris-Dakar rally vehicle, which they have amongst the military versions on their DVD 2026 stand, has been a proving ground. “We made some basic mods to that, and it won,” Tooley notes. “Some tweaks to the subframe, the roll cages so you can safely race the thing – the rest of it’s all the same.”
A monocoque chassis offers unique benefits
“Being monocoque, it’s three times the stiffness of any conventional ladder frame,” he says. “We’ve got 27,500 newton-metres per degree in this chassis. It just means it can do a lot of things – and you can do it in comfort, and you can do it safely.”
Hang on, I thought that your average monocoque uses the windows as a structural element? Again, I was wrong, that stiffness figure is measured on the body itself. “When we do our torsional testing, we don’t have the glass in there,” he explains. “No doors, no rear glass, nothing. We do it all on the body.”
So when they cut out the rear to develop that pickup version, the team went back to first principles. “We ran our CAE, said right, where have we lost it, and how do we connect it back in? So we’ve made this top cage… designed to be full bolt-on, so it’s easier to change and repair for the military.”
The final step in the concept phase is to close the load path. “The last bit of the puzzle… we’re going to connect this roll cage into the sill and back up to the back. Then you’ve closed the chain, which means all of our standard roof crush requirements are still there, plus you’ve got the extra strength of the roll cage.”
The modification work is far from improvised. “We just took the bare shell… we’ve got a six-axis laser cutter, we did it all in CAD,” Tooley says. “We literally just put the robot in, and it cut the car perfectly.” Rather than reverting to a simple ladder frame, the team created an aluminium space frame under the monocoque. “All your structural load path comes into the floor… it all connects back into our main structure,” he explains. “On a normal ladder frame, that’s all you’ve got. What we’ve done here is we’ve still got half the body on the top. You’ve still got your cant rail, and you’ve still got all your structure down there. We bolted in, we connected into this on both sides – so you’ve got two bend moments rather than the one bend moment you get from a ladder frame.”
The result surprised even the engineers. “When we did the CAE to this, this is stiffer than a standard one. This is 29,000 newton-metres per degree. It really surprised me, in a good way.”
The architecture is designed for flexibility. The obvious application is a pickup/flatbed: “We’ve got a steel bed in here, so we can engineer it to deliver a two-ton payload,” Tooley says. “But it doesn’t need to have a steel bed; it can have whatever you want in it. From the floor up, it could be something else – anything.”
Safety, liability and ADAS in a combat context
Tooley is clear that modern military vehicles can’t ignore mainstream safety and regulation. “My biggest passion behind this is soldiers being as safe as they possibly can be in vehicles,” he says. “The UK government recommends it. The UK army has lost their crown immunity – it’s not the same as before. So if a soldier gets injured at work, then there is liability.”
That drives a more serious take on driver assistance. “In the PSQ you have to have all the ADAS (Advanced Driver Assistance Systems) on,” he explains. Radar, sensors and airbags remain integral – but controllable. “We can plug in and tell our car, right, I’m driving on the public road, I want all my ADAS features to work, all my airbags are on. I am now driving a normal factory five-star car. Then, right, now I’ve got to go on deployment – right, flick some switches and I’ve disabled my airbags, I’ve disabled my ADAS. And that’s how we’ve programmed it all in.”
Stripping complexity out of electronics
Another critique levelled at modern Defenders is electronic complexity. Here, Dakar again provides a template. “Another misconception is Defender is overly complicated, it’s got too many ECUs,” Tooley says. “This box you see here” (there is a big box where the centre console would be) “is our concept for our simplified electrical architecture. Dakar has stripped out all the ECUs they don’t need… we think we can get this car down to five ECUs.”
Those would consolidate powertrain, gearbox and ADAS control into a single, serviceable unit. The loom is redesigned with diagnostics in mind. “Our loom will have current and voltage monitoring,” he says. “We’ll break it down into sections, and it’ll flag up: fault found in harness one, replace harness one when it’s next back on base.”
That, he argues, is the difference between theory and field reality. “We understand that if you’re trained up, you can read all the diagnostics, but a lot of tours won’t be like that. We want to make it as easy as possible. We will offer a huge training schedule in the first part of the bid – but out in the field, somebody else will still need to problem-solve.”
The Defender Wolf Series II, a fast, British, engineer‑led concept
The concept itself came together with surprising speed. “I did this in a week, by the way,” Tooley says with some pride. “We built this in a week. It’s my little brainchild.” The visual language acknowledges the past: “I really did take inspiration from the 316 old top cage, the old safari cars.” His grin is infectious and goes beyond just being a part of the job.
Many components remain standard, deliberately so. “That’s all standard JLR hinges, right into the JLR catches,” he notes. Existing mounting points are reused rather than new metal being drilled. “This has all been signed off for roof crushing and to have the turrets and various weapons on top.”
Opinions duly changed
From a sceptical starting point, the engineering story is persuasive. I’m more than happy to apologise “OK, you’ve completely changed my opinion of the vehicle.” For Tooley, the motivation is simple: “I’ve been at JLR for 19 years… my main passion behind this is that it’s British, it’s Defender, and I want our lads and ladies to be as safe as they possibly can.” I wandered off to eat humble pie, quietly happy that James had so convincingly parried all of my grumbles.
Having looked over and spoken to most of the contenders, none of them have been such a surprise as the Defender. Cynically I really only took their entering this particular race as a way of getting some headlines for the launch of their utility Defender version, however I have come away completely converted. The Defender Wolf II could be one of the best LMV bids, it really is everything that the Defender should be in the modern world – a complete break from the old version was needed, I’m not sure that there is any place for nostalgia in this competition (sorry Grenadier).
