The new Defender Wolf Series II sub-species from Jaguar Land Rover finally made its public debut at DVD 2026 last Wednesday, reports Bob Morrison.
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It is now exactly forty years since I penned my first articles on Military Land Rovers for commercial magazines, so quite naturally I was pleased to see the marque formally returning to the military scene after a decade in the doldrums following cease of serial production of the Solihull-built ladder frame chassis Defender (previously known as Land Rover) model a decade ago. Of course as readers of this section of Joint-Forces.com will be aware, the monocoque-bodied ‘New Defender’ or D7x platform has actually made its first forays into the military sector but it is only recently that Jaguar Land Rover has re-established a Defence Division to carry forward the sterling work of the old Government & Military Operations Department based at Lode Lane.
While DVD (Defence Vehicle Dynamics) held at Millbrook Proving Ground was the logical time and place to launch Wolf Series II – not least because that was where the publicity campaign to rebuild brand awareness started in the early 1990s ahead of the original Wolf Land Rover trials for the UK MoD’s forthcoming TUL/TUM replacement contract – it was less than perfect from my perspective. With several other manufactures / consortia exhibiting their wares for UK LMV, the Land Rover Wolf and ATL Pinzgauer replacement contract, there simply was not enough time to give all parties equal attention plus concentrate on all the other new military subjects which needed covering when ideally I could have done with concentrating on the Wolf Series II debut on its own for the best part of a day. And with the most interesting Wolf SII variants stationed at the busiest part of the expo site being pretty much constantly fawned over by show attendees once the wraps came off the opportunity for uncluttered photography simply didn’t arise before the high security Millbrook Proving Ground site was locked down again to both media and general public. Ho-hum.
[© Bob Morrison]
For the moment therefore I am only bringing readers the few record shots above so all can see what the future possibly holds, but hopefully in the not too distant future I’ll return to the Defender Wolf Series II topic with much more detail.
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