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And so it should, frankly, measuring 5358mm in overall length. The car’s extra length is concentrated entirely within a rear overhang that has been extended by 600mm, as well as reprofiled slightly to minimise the compromise to the car’s departure angle. That means it has the same wheelbase as the Defender 110 and only a slightly larger turning circle.
It has a higher standard equipment level than the 110, however, getting height-adjustable air suspension as standard, which accounts for at least part of the car’s relative weight penalty (130s are about 200kg heavier than equivalent 110s).
From launch, engine options were restricted to mild-hybrid six-cylinder petrols and diesels. With the rear-axle packaging associated with the P400e plug-in hybrid option, an eight-seat 130 PHEV would be a very long shot.
Happily, though, working a supercharged 5.0-litre V8 under the bonnet to create a new mega-Defender was obviously a much easier (and no doubt far more profitable) exploit, and so here we are on the eve of Land Rover’s electrification, welcoming the latest, loudest and most loutish entrant into the 130 line-up: the P500.
You get the sense, given the general trajectory of the car market and prevailing public opinion, that something this large and uncouth shouldn’t really exist in 2023. This hulking, imposing goliath – all 2670kg, 5000cc and 5358mm of it – arrives as the latest in a long line of mammoth-engined, go-anywhere apocalypse wagons from Land Rover – a brand that in less than 12 months will be selling its first electric car. How’s that for diversity?
The 130 V8 takes the Defender name into hitherto untapped territory, not just in terms of its heft and presence, but in its positioning in the heartland of the sporting luxury SUV sector – where it contends obviously with the Mercedes-AMG G63, but also indirectly with other V8 behemoths like the Audi RS Q8 and certain flavours of Porsche Cayenne.
Like the 90 and 110 V8s, the most powerful version of the stretched 130 uses JLR’s ‘AJ’ supercharged V8, rather than the new-school 4.4-litre BMW V8 as deployed in top-rung Range Rovers, albeit downtuned a touch to give ‘just’ 493bhp and 432lb ft.
JLR bosses refused to tell us whether this would be the last time we would sample the hallowed AJ, but production has finally come to an end after nearly three decades and the units used here are from a stockpile of indeterminate quantity, with some reserved for the last-of-the-line Jaguar F-Type, so it seems the end is nigh.
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