We apparently won’t need to wait long to see the 2020 Land Rover Defender. Land Rover released an interesting teaser today showing the boxy machine in camouflage driving into a transport truck along with a couple of dates.
Most prominent is the phrase “Do not unwrap until 2019.” That’s obviously a play on both holiday gifts and the camouflage wrap on the Defender. It also seems to make fairly clear that the SUV will be unveiled in 2019.
Since the company has been showing off the camo-clad car in public lately, we bet we’ll be seeing it pretty soon, perhaps by the end of the auto show season with the New York show in April.
We won’t have to wait that long for more details, though. At the bottom is the date of December 27, and a Land Rover representative said that more information will be released that day. Certainly it won’t be a full reveal, but we might at least get a teaser of an unwrapped Defender, an official reveal date, and/or more photos and video of the camouflaged Defender. Maybe even some details about that tailgate-mounted spare tire we haven’t seen before.
This is also a good time to recap what we do know about the 2020 Land Rover Defender. It’s staying true to the boxy roots of the previous models. It will also be available in both two-door and four-door variants, just like its predecessor. Surprisingly, it uses fully independent suspension front and rear, unlike the old Defenders that had solid axles at both ends.
Under the hood will probably be some existing Jaguar-Land Rover engines, probably including gas and diesel turbo four-cylinder engines, and possibly a V6 option or two. There’s a chance that a truck version could be spawned, just like with past Defenders. Whether it comes to North America is unclear, but if the Jeep Gladiator is a success, we imagine Land Rover would consider offering it.