I grew up in small town farmland in Southeast Wisconsin and worked everyday on my uncle's dairy farm picking rocks, bailing hay, milking cows, birthing calves, etc.......hardest workers on the planet in my opinion no matter where they do it on the planet. My uncle's farm was by no means a commercial grade farm; it was a family business and small-town farm that broke even at best as most farms during get era. Wasn't for me of course but I have the greatest respect for this type of work no matter where. I did this every summer and on the weekends during the mid to late 80's and early 90's before I decided to leave and go to a lumber yard until graduation.
We had single cab, long-bed 4x4 pickups and although on occasion we tossed bails in the back to take to the calf house. The vast majority was with a small tractor and trailer or skid-loader, or trailer behind the pick-up, etc.; not once did we ever throw a dead animal in the back of the truck; we used skid loaders or the tractor buckets or tossed them in the trailer do do that. If a trailer wasn't available, we drug it with a rope. I can't imagine that the English were much different and if we want to play devil's advocate, further behind our way of life when it came to farming. To say the Defender was built to have the dead-animal thought process in mind is quit comical to a degree and just another example of sensationalism and example of how a modern vehicle doesn't meet 1% of the uses that "some" people have done back when the Defender was first built and that makes the new Defender "Not a Defender".........love reading this crap. Was the old Defender used by many farmers to toss bails of hay, tool kits, all kinds of stuff and yes, on the slight occasion, toss a dead goat or whatever in there....sure, people do this and many parts of the world but I'd gather that goat found itself on the hood far more times than someone tossing it in the back (outside of the D130). I see a ton of pics of UK and other European farmers towing trailers/wagons behind their Defenders on their farms just like we did; all of which from the same era.
Is the new Defender a farm wagon; NOPE, not even close! But it's just as close to a farm vehicle as a Land Cruiser SUV, Jeep, Explorer, etc. Can a new Defender in a full utility "fleet/commercial" no frills version be just as capable and successful in the Gov, NGO, LE, etc as the let's say the new G-Wagon, or LC.........YEP, 100% if JLR gets the price right on those bulk sales.
Farmers are purpose built, functional, and efficient operators just like the vehicles and tools they use in the most toughest of times; they buy trucks and purpose built equipment of the era to get their jobs done efficiently and effectively and run them to the ground until the next time.
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