TOP OF THE WORLD, MUM 2020 LAND ROVER DEFENDER 110

You would be forgiven for assuming the judges of our 2021 SUV of the Year competition simply walked around the parking lot filled with 28 new and refreshed SUVs and pinned the award on the Land Rover Defender without starting a single vehicle. Unlike most of this year’s field, the all-new Defender actually looks the part of a proper sport utility vehicle.

- JONNY LIEBERMAN

Sport utility vehicles as we know them have transformed from go-anywhere tools to mall-crawling tall wagons and minivan substitutes. Most vehicles we refer to today as SUVs are actually CUVs— car-based crossovers lifted up in the air a few inches, not for ground clearance but because people like to sit up high.

There is no mistaking the Land Rover Defender for one of these poseurs. That said, the Defender itself has metamorphosed to play in the current times. It ditches the decades-old steel frame of the previous L316 version (itself an evolution of the original “Series” Land Rovers, a chromosome or two removed from a farm tractor). Instead, the new L663 Defender sports an aluminum unibody. Perhaps most shocking of all to loyalists and off-roading aficionados, the live axles have been dropped in favor of fully independent suspension. How do you say “sacrilege” in the Queen’s English? Yet if asked to traverse great swaths of rutted, tumbling African trails, the Defender is a steadfast, undeterred companion and guide.

It seems like a simple decision to hand the Calipers to the lads from Solihull. But not so fast. Merely being a rough-and-tumble “real” SUV does not automatically earn you SUV of the Year.

Even during this global-crisis reality, we put all 28 contender vehicles (including variants) through a slew of instrumented and evaluative tests, checking everything from acceleration and handling to second-row passenger space, from fuel economy to infotainment intuitiveness.

In so doing, we cut our list to six finalists then dove back in for a round to test (among other things) rough road ride, switchback cornering, and smart cruise control at freeway speeds.