A new report sheds light on what the first vehicle from JLR and Stellantis’ fledgling partnership could be.
Ever since announcing a new partnership back in May, details have been thin on the ground as to what sort of vehicle might emerge from a Jaguar Land Rover-Stellantis joint venture. Now, thanks to a new Automotive News report, we have a better idea what it likely will be: a pickup truck version of the latest Defender.
That move could be significant for a couple reasons, if and when it officially comes to fruition. Keep in mind, neither automaker has gone on the record corroborating this report just yet. Land Rover currently builds the Defender in Slovakia, and also imports every vehicle it sells in the US market. While Land Rover does not seem to be shifting any of the SUV’s production stateside, building and importing a truck over here could subject it to both a 25% Chicken Tax as well as a 15% tariff currently placed on vehicles imported from the EU.
What’s the answer, then, if you’re JLR and want to increase your North American footprint? That would be leveraging the partnership with Stellantis, to build a vehicle in the United States that would not face those levies.
Right now, however, it’s unclear exactly what a Land Rover Defender pickup will be. Would the joint venture result in a co-developed model, instead of JLR offering up the design and Stellantis bringing the manufacturing capacity? Will it be a unibody pickup based on the SUV, or a body-on-frame vehicle closer to a Jeep Gladiator or Ram 1500, and therefore built on a completely different platform to the Defender? Will it have even have a Land Rover Ingenium engine, since those four- and six-cylinder powertrains are built in the UK?
Odds are, the truth could lie somewhere in the middle. That is, both automakers could co-develop a Land Rover Defender pickup that would utilize Stellantis’ US manufacturing capacity, and on a platform that could underpin future Stellantis vehicles. Again, we don’t know for a fact that will be the case just yet, but both companies emphasized “product and technology development”, so it makes sense both would bring some say to the final product’s design, instead of JLR basically subcontracting a Defender pickup to a Big Three automaker.
Whatever happens, we may still be years away from a potential Land Rover Defender truck. If it does come in the next few years, though, we could have a new option against existing luxury trucks like the GMC Sierra Denali or Ford F-150 Platinum, or at the outside, even something like an Ineos Grenadier as far as having a Land Rover pickup goes. While we have seen a Defender truck in the past, it’s all but certain a new model would follow the line of the new one, and we won’t get a straight-up agricultural workhorse like the old Defender used to be.
