2015 Land Rover Defender to be built in India

2015 Land Rover Defender - made in India

It’s reported that the 2015 Land Rover Defender will, as Cars UK predicted, be built in India with CKDs coming back to the UK.

Land Rover has been busy previewing the 2015 Defender at the last few motor shows, both as a replacement for the current Defender and as a lifestyle Defender in the guise of the DC 100 Sport. And now we hear, when the 2015 Land Rover Defender arrives, it will be built in India.

By all accounts, the current Defender Concepts are pretty close to what we’re likely to see when the new Defender actually arrives as a production model – bar a few cosmetic tweaks and some of the ‘Concept Frippery’ on the Sport – and it looks like Land Rover will also opt to stick the new Defender on a modified version of the T5 chassis that underpins the current Discovery.

Interestingly – and just as we’ve predicted (most recently back in September) – Tata are planning on building the new Defender in India. Which makes so much sense. A big chunk of the world market for the Defender is more easily accessible from Asia, and building the Defender fully in India, at the heart of its key world markets, is far less contentious than taking the Range Rover off to India to be produced.

According to Autocar, Tata are planning on doing a reverse CKD operation with the new Defender, where CKD kits are shipped back to the UK and bolted together for the European market.