Land Rover launched the new Defender V8 a couple of weeks ago, and it is already said to be working on a hardcore variant of the off-roader.
This new version is tipped to come from Jaguar Land Rover’s Special Vehicle Operations unit and while stopping short of confirming the model, SVO boss Michael van der Sande told Car Sales that the new Defender V8 doesn’t carry any SV badging because it doesn’t have the right “amount of technical changes you would expect of an SV product.”
JLR purchased Bowler last year in what van der Sande described as a “very intentional” move as the automaker was “slightly underrepresented in performance off-roading.” Thanks to Bowler’s expertise with making the Defender even more capable off the beaten path, JLR is now in the perfect position to capitalize on the growing demand for performance off-roaders.
Read More: Bowler Officially Joins The Jaguar Land Rover Family
“We have a strategy of remaining faithful to the underlying character for the vehicle we’re developing,” van der Sande said. “That’s really important to me. When you just add sport to the car you’re working on – sometimes you end up with a really good car, sometimes you end up with a really incoherent car that doesn’t quite know what it is.”
The British company has yet to confirm what direction it will take with the off-roader, but it could take inspiration from the Discovery SVX concept that was unveiled in 2017. That vehicle was outfitted with long-travel dampers, enlarged off-road tires, increased ride height and wheel articulation, and a supercharged 5.0-liter V8 pumping out 493 hp and 461 lb-ft (625 Nm) of torque.
Jaguar Land Rover intended to bring the Defender SVX into production, but van der Sande has since revealed that he and SVO chief engineer Jamal Hameedi scrapped the project as they had too much on their plate at the time and needed to scale back SVO’s activities.
