New Defender Rage/Hate Thread
- Thread starter DieselRanger
- Start date
JeepColorado
Well-known member
I think this is one of the worst trends in Jeep customization, but at least the Jeep designers are smart enough not to make it standard from the factory
DieselRanger
Well-known member
I think they went in neither direction and that's okay. The Pathfinder (and Blazer, which you could also have included) removed capability. The Defender added capability. The Wrangler has very slowly added capability while placing form above function. The Bronco is a leap ahead of its predecessor in capability in many ways, but clearly targeted the Wrangler market.
The rest is an argument over aesthetics. Just because it "looks" soft clearly doesn't mean it *is* soft.
Corgi_express
Well-known member
If there's one thing the rage/hate thread has proved, it's that there are a lot of people who care a lot more about what it looks like than they do about what it's capable of. Weirdly, these are often the same people criticizing JLR design for supposedly putting "form over function", because nothing says "functional modern vehicle" to me like driving a brick into the wind.
TexasTJ
Climbing Nerd
Hahaha well the New Defender is better that the new pathfinder or Blazer for sure. That funny but not a real comparison.
TexasTJ
Climbing Nerd
Blaise
Well-known member
It's what SOME people want. Not everyone wants the same things.
Hell, if certain things get popular, that specifically turns me off from it.
TexasTJ
Climbing Nerd
This is true. I know a lot of guys driving Discovery IIs because they wanted to be different from anyone in a Jeep.
But midsize 4x4 and nostalgia sells right now and to throw a little shade at Land Rover and Ford they’re both about 5 to 7 years late to the game.
A lot of lost money, and the 4 door wrangler kind of showed the way and the people want offroaders. Aesthetic aside this is and will be a thriving market segment. It’s a good time to love 4 x 4‘s. Now if Toyota can get us a truck that is more FJ and less cruiser the market will really be looking cool!
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T-Willy
Well-known member
Fixed that.
DieselRanger
Well-known member
So on my D5, all of the sensitive bits are tucked waaaaay up inside the underside. There's lots of flat belly pan, but above that, there are several inches of space. The air tank, for example, is a full 6 inches above the lowest part of the door sill on the right side, aligned with the right thigh of the passenger. The DEF tank is about 4" above the pan that sits under my butt on the driver's side, and the main electrical bus is tucked up even higher than that. The rear diff and center locker/transfer case are likewise several inches up from the flat underside. So the D5 and Defender have lots of "extra" space as well above their advertised ground clearance. And what I see in a flat belly is the ability to think of the space under my vehicle as a rectangular cube (or "cuboid") rather than a complex shape with cutouts for bell housings and axles.
JeepColorado
Well-known member
This is the way a designer of a modern 4x4 should talk-
- He describes how they wanted to design something that could be modified- that giving a building block to people so they could make it their own was key
- He says they wanted to design it in a way that a person with simple tools could engage with the vehicle and that you don't need all of the complicated voodoo in some 4x4s
- What he says about the bolts is completely cool
- The profile is not styled- the function drove the look, not the other way around- what makes that modern is that so few people are doing it- it's all soft-styling features now. That is definitely one of the biggest issues to me with the Defender- it's contemporary- soft-looking- but so is everything else, which is what makes the Bronco's purposeful style which we might think of as retro- it actually makes it modern relative to the contemporary vehicles that are out there
- He wanted to do something explicitly Bronco- not mixed with any other product line- they wanted it to be a pure interpretation of the original- another way I think LR screwed up the design- the Defender looks more like a rebadged D5 than it does the old Defender- perhaps with the exception of the Alpine windows.
- He describes how they wanted to design something that could be modified- that giving a building block to people so they could make it their own was key
- He says they wanted to design it in a way that a person with simple tools could engage with the vehicle and that you don't need all of the complicated voodoo in some 4x4s
- What he says about the bolts is completely cool
- The profile is not styled- the function drove the look, not the other way around- what makes that modern is that so few people are doing it- it's all soft-styling features now. That is definitely one of the biggest issues to me with the Defender- it's contemporary- soft-looking- but so is everything else, which is what makes the Bronco's purposeful style which we might think of as retro- it actually makes it modern relative to the contemporary vehicles that are out there
- He wanted to do something explicitly Bronco- not mixed with any other product line- they wanted it to be a pure interpretation of the original- another way I think LR screwed up the design- the Defender looks more like a rebadged D5 than it does the old Defender- perhaps with the exception of the Alpine windows.
JeepColorado
Well-known member
You should listen to what the Chief Designer of the Bronco has to say about that- the purposeful design of the Bronco is modern because everything else now is so soft styled. I'd certainly call a G-Wagon a thoroughly modern and functional vehicle and it's known as the flying brick.
JeepColorado
Well-known member
Written over 10 years ago- it's just as relevant today. @DieselRanger the clever way you write sometimes reminds me of this article
www.caranddriver.com
Make Mine a Jeep: P.J. O'Rourke's Ode to the Wrangler
It’s three things not easily found these days: straight, square, forthright.
www.caranddriver.com
TexasTJ
Climbing Nerd
I love when he talks about how important the bolt is as in invitation to Create.