Yahoo Autos 2021 Land Rover Defender 90 Off-Road Review | No Time to Dry
For Land Rover fans, the availability of the short-wheelbase Defender 90 model has been a long time coming. I got a chance to sample one for a brief, on-road drive earlier this year, but it was just recently that Autoblog was offered a second crack at the revived 4x4 nameplate, this time in a more appropriate environment.
With summer winding down in southeast Michigan, I was pleased to be offered the opportunity to take the short-wheelbase, two-door 90 out for a little fun in the dirt. As usual, my venue of choice was Holly Oaks ORV Park, located about 20 miles north of downtown Detroit on I-75.
Built on the now-depleted section of an old sand and gravel plant, Holly Oaks has a little bit of everything, from natural elevation change and dirt/mud obstacles, to carefully placed rock complexes designed to put off-road rigs to the test, be they stock or heavily modified. There are even some high-speed courses set up for those who prefer a little taste of Baja over the slower pace of rock crawling.
When it comes to a nameplate like Defender, there’s little question when it comes to capability. Bombing along a desert trail and slowly threading obstacles in 4-Lo are both solidly in its wheelhouse. But a two-door model like the 90 leans tight and technical, rather than fast and fluid, largely due to the short wheelbase. What it gains in maneuverability, it sacrifices in high-speed stability and comfort.
With that in mind, I started slow. As a proper off-roader should, the Defender 90 First Edition comes standard with all-terrain tires (albeit on 20-inch wheels, but at least they weren’t accompanied by low-hanging side pipes). Aired down for a little extra cushion, I set the D90’s air suspension to its off-road height and started off with some traction tests.
Climbing loose sand hills in 4-Hi without the rear differential locked proved just how far modern traction-control systems have come. Even after bogging down, the Defender’s computers were able to sort out a few precariously soft uphill stretches with nothing more than a stern (but judicious) ramp-up of throttle.
Naturally, locking the rear differential rendered the same sections entirely trivial. It also meant I could be quite a bit less ebullient with the right pedal and keep our speed down a bit more without having to worry about sacrificing momentum. But when it comes to the really technical stuff, there’s no substitute for a low range.
Parts of the park not frequented by dirt bike and ATV traffic can be quite desolate, and those that would require a fairly well-equipped off-roader to tackle even with the benefit of a spotter tend to be even quieter still. The muddy track along the far end of the park, meant as a bypass for some of its tougher break-over obstacles, is one such section, especially in the heat of the summer when its entrance is often grown over with bushes that make it appear more narrow than it really is.
With this claustrophobic thicket clawing out for the Defender’s Pangea Green paint finish, I made use of the short wheelbase to keep the foliage (and the hard-packed, stone-riddled dirt hidden behind it) at bay as I meticulously threaded our way around to our destination: a series of dips and gullies with little drainage fed by a summer’s worth of rainwater. Yep, you guessed it. Mud.
While the Defender does come with all-terrains, we’re talking about a set of relatively basic Goodyear Wranglers. They’re not bad, but neither are they meant for severe duty. If you’ve never encountered the sort of mud that lurks around an old gravel pit, think back to the slick, sludgy goop that accumulated on your grade school art teacher’s finger nails. It might as well be grease. Fortunately, Land Rover’s Terrain Response system makes choosing the right mode for a given surface quite simple. With the Defender in 4-Lo and the drive mode dialed over to “Mud,” I ventured in.
To do so required clearing a decent-sized hump, which the short-wheelbase Defender 90 had no trouble doing. From there until the next dry spot, momentum was the name of the game, but only to a point. Go too slow, and I might bog down; too fast, and I might eat the next climb-out ramp with the Defender’s low-hanging front aero dam. Each successive gully revealed itself to be wider, wetter and seemingly even more untouched than the last, and yet each was dispatched with little drama. Only the final hump even squeaked against the Land Rover’s underbody protection, and the following wash sent muddy rooster tails over its roof, but keeping momentum up never proved challenging.
From there, I sought out some hard-packed, scratchy dirt surfaces to help un-pack the tires’ void spots. With them properly cleared, I faced a downhill trek back toward the remainder of the park. Three paths down lay before me; the first one I chose appeared to lead nowhere, prompting a reversal; the second seemed to wander off into a maintenance area. A third appeared, at least at first blush, to be a winner. I was wrong.
