IT’S THE sort of thing that gets hardcore Land Rover freaks frothing at the mouth: take a Defender add all the luxury items in the book and then say you are aiming at the more ‘urban’ user. You end up with a Defender with electric front windows, remote central locking, heated front screen, air conditioning, CD player with four speakers, alloy wheels, heated front seats and leather trimmed steering wheel and gear knobs. But is this a sensible extension of the range or the Defender going soft to appeal to those who think ‘green lane’ is street running off the A23 in Streatham?
The Defender XS was unveiled at last year’s Birmingham Motor Show and is a trim level above County on Station Wagons and 110 Double Cabs. On the Defender 90, the £24,995 XS costs £3,645 more than the County, but adds more than £4,350 worth of goodies. In fact, the only extras left are a sunroof (unnecessary with air con), metallic paint and towing equipment, though there are some things you can’t have, like a centre seat instead of a cubby or the off-road tyre options available with steel wheels.
Externally, the only things that pick an XS out from any other Defender are ‘smoked’ indicator lenses, which are actually clear, and Brunel finish headlamp surrounds and grille. Brunel is the matt, dark silver metallic finish used on the new Range Rover’s grille and gills and is virtually the same colour as the test car’s paintwork.
The XS’s unique black part-leather seats make the interior look a bit sombre but they do look classy. They are also surprisingly practical because the leather sides give you a hard wearing edge that your bum slides easily over as you climb in, but the centres are a grippy cloth so you don’t slide about or get sweaty
Since last year, 90 station wagons have had the bulkhead behind the front seats replaced with a substantial bar which gives the interior a much more roomy feel, and means you can have map pockets on the seatbacks and allows some heat into the back. More importantly, with the bulkhead there you could not slide the seats to the ends of their runners unless the backs were uncomfortably upright but now you can slide them right back and still have more rake available on the backs. It makes you realise how well shaped the backs are because they offer better lumbar and shoulder support than many taller backed seats. The rear side-facing seat cushions are long for good thigh support.
The leather trimmed steering wheel and gear levers are much more pleasant to use on a cold morning than bare plastic, so you really notice the handbrake’s lack of a leather grip. The heated front seats help make up for the Defender’s slow to warm heating (a hazard of thermally efficient turbo-diesels). Similarly, the heated front screen keeps it mist free while the heater is warming up as well as being able to rid it of frost in less time than it takes to scrape side windows.
But it’s a shame the air conditioning isn’t linked to the heater so you could use its extra fan and vents to boost heating or push cooled air out of the screen vents to cool your head more efficiently in summer.
Since last year Defenders have had a new switch panel in the facia’s centre with large push buttons replacing the mix of rocker and twist switches Defenders have collected over the years. It puts all the switches in easy sight and reach of the driver, so there is no more turning on the hazards when you wanted the heated rear screen. But the air con controls are by your right knee below where the rocker switches used to be.
In the XS, the switch panel is Brunel finish which looks odd because it matches nothing else inside the car, though without it the interior below screen height would be a excessively black. The electric window switches are located in the panel and it is surprising how much you miss them when you return to an older Defender. It is so much easier to open either window at the press of a button instead of leaning against the steering wheel to wind something at calf height. It also means there is no handle to catch on your wellies, but neither is there anything to hook your curry bag on.
The instrument binnacle looks as it has since the 90 and 110 were born, but at night the dials and heater emblems are now backlit for clarity, though the heater sliders are unlit so you still can’t see where they are.
A nice touch is that the old scuttle flap levers you pulled sideways to unlock have been replaced with sprung knobs you pull to unlock, making them much easier to use. You lose the facia’s trough of stowage space, but the centre cubby and seatback map pockets make up for that, and the XS Station Wagons also get a useful net pocket on the back door.

secure loads
Another first across the Defender range this year is load tie-down points for all Station Wagons and hard tops. As most ordinary cars have these, you wonder why it has taken 55 years to get them in an off-roader. They look substantial enough for everyday use but are bolted into the aluminium wheel arches, instead of going through to the steel chassis fixing points, so they might not stand expedition use.
Access to the load area is made easier by the central locking – how often have you leapt out of a Defender to get something out of the back only to have to go back and turn off the engine to get the key? There’s no more struggling across to let a passenger in and, because you have a remote sender, there is no keyhole on the passenger door, which is one less lock barrel for thieves to pull. If you are carrying something valuable in the back and don’t want to risk someone grabbing it at the lights, you can lock the back door manually but, unlike most cars, this doesn’t isolate it from the central locking so it unlocks as soon as you centrally unlock.
The XS spec also includes a pair of substantial side runners. These stout bars have a step on them and are strong enough to protect the sills and to allow you to stamp the dirt out of your boots. They are above chassis height so they won’t reduce break over angles.

That is the important thing about the XS package, it does not compromise the Defender’s basic ability. In fact, having the ABS and traction control package as standard enhances it. The ABS greatly increases safety on- and off-road, especially when towing where such systems can reduce braking distances by as much as half. The traction control uses the same wheel sensors to compare the rotational speeds of the wheels and, when it finds one turning faster than the others, applies the brake to that wheel. When combined with the locking centre differential it makes it difficult to get a Defender stuck, short of something like grounding the axle.
Even driving it into waterlogged soil with several inches of slushy snow on top never made the Defender miss a beat, with the traction control occasionally ‘twanging’ as a wheel lost traction. Checking the wheel ruts afterwards revealed the water seeping back over clean tyre tracks.
In most cases you can help it along by easing off the throttle pedal so you are not overriding its efforts, but occasionally, like in really deep stuff, it needs a little more power to give it something to play with. So if one method doesn’t work, try the other.
The only thing to get the better of it was large patches of ice which left the vehicle slowly slithering sideways like any other four-wheel-drive vehicle. This is because the system relies on detecting differences in wheel rotational speeds, so it cannot help if all four wheels are slipping at the same speed, which rarely happens in mud, However, as soon as one wheel finds more grip, it comes to your aid.

lightweight clutch
Every time I try a Defender, the transfer box seems to engage more easily. This one slipped easily in and out of low and readily engaged the diff lock whether
you were moving slowly or parked. Its main box was a little notchy in its long travel between gears but precise through the gates and the clutch has a car-like lightness.
The Td5 engine is inherently smooth, though you are much more aware of it in a Defender than in a Discovery – you can even hear the hum of the centrifugal oil filter spinning down from 15,000 rpm when you switch off. This one was a little less refined than other Defender Td5s I’ve driven, though it was still not loud enough to affect conversation at high motorway speeds. The engine had a pleasantly deep note at low speeds which became a turbine hum at around 45mph. By 60mph most of the noise appears to be transmission buzz which starts to sound busy by 70mph, but you’d be shouting in a Defender Tdi by then.
TD5s need more revs than you would expect to pull away cleanly, especially on deep ground or when towing, but once underway flexibility is good. The torque graph shows a very steep climb from just under 130lb ft at 1000rpm to the peak 221lb ft at 1950rpm and it holds more than 150lb ft from about 1200 to 4000rpm. In a Defender it develops 122bhp at 4200rpm. Land Rover claim an 87mph top speed and European combined fuel consumption figure of 28.2mpg for the 90.
I think one reason some drivers feel it is not gutsy enough is the non-linear action of the drive-by-wire electronic throttle. You get fair performance on part throttle openings but it is as if there is a point of resistance in the pedal and if you push past that, performance beefs up considerably. The pedal seems to need a little more travel than is normal to find the best performance. However, this does make it easier to drive smoothly on rough tracks in high ratio. Engaging low ratio reprogrammes the throttle to become less sensitive which makes it easy to trickle in the power.
Because the 90XS has the Freestyle alloy wheels package, it also gets anti-roll bars front and rear which greatly reduce body roll, but it is difficult to take full advantage of the improvement in handling because the steering feels so remote. In fact, my own aged Defender feels much better on its standard 205R16 tyres with thinner aftermarket anti-roll bars. I suspect this is because the Freestyle wheels come with 235/85R16 tyres which are tall enough to raise ground clearance by 38mm so probably flex more on cornering.
Station Wagons also have heavy duty suspension so ride is firm, though the long wheel travel means it absorbs larger irregularities better than it does small ones. For what is basically a working off-roader, ride isn’t bad even if it is not as supple as a Discovery’s.

Does a 90XS makse sense?
For £500 less you could have a Discovery S seven seater, but without air con, heated front screen, CD player and centre diff lock, or the character. For some a Discovery would also be too sophisticated for a working vehicle and would lack the 90’s extreme off-road agility. An XS is also likely to hold value better than a specced up County.
The XS package is not a softening of the Defender because Land Rover have added nothing that interferes with its central purpose in life. It is all useful stuff that makes the Defender more comfortable, convenient, safer and capable. Frankly, it would be wasted on the urban user, but for someone who has to work from a Defender it will make life a lot easier.