It’s easy to understand why plenty of enthusiasts point the finger at the British automaker for selling out, but lest we forget, this change was necessary. Land Rover has to comply with new emissions standards in Europe in 2021, namely a fleet average of 95 grams of carbon dioxide per kilometer. That’s an incredibly tall order for a company which is specialized in utility vehicles, let alone behemoths that weight more than two metric tonnes.
Given these circumstances, does a Defender pickup truck have a place in the lineup? Of course it does; just look at the body-on-frame Gladiator from Jeep! Unibody trucks are also in the offing from Hyundai (the upcoming Santa Cruz), Volkswagen, as well as the Ford Motor Company. Land Rover, however, won’t make it happen even though it’s “technically possible.”
This leaves us only with renderings like the double-cab truck from Oscar V – a.k.a. wb.artist20 on Instagram. “I’ve seen a few concepts online and none I’ve seen give it an actual detached bed like a real pickup would,” said the pixel artist, though the detached bed is merely wishful thinking.
Because of the ladder-frame chassis, the bed isn’t a structural part of a pickup truck. In the case of a unitized body, the unitary construction would make it impossible for the Defender to feature a detached bed.
On that note, the biggest reasons why the Defender pickup won’t happen are obvious. The Old Continent prefers light commercial vehicles such as vans to the detriment of trucks, and because it’s made in Europe, the British automaker would have to pony up the Chicken Tax to sell it stateside.
The 25-percent tariff on light trucks is a ghost of the Cold War, yet there are ways of circumventing the Chicken Tax. Fiat Chrysler Automobiles builds the Ram ProMaster City in Turkey, imports passenger configurations to the U.S., then converts these vans to cargo configurations.
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