Just when you thought it was safe to go back on your television, the spectre of Games of Thrones continues to
loom large in the shape of this battle hardened but still very elegant Defender 110

In last month’s issue, we took a look at a stupendously cool early Land Rover 110 soft-top that had been
remanufactured into the ultimate beach runner by the guys at Legacy Overland. It had just the right level of
bling, just the right level of restraint, an engine to love (the original 2.5 petrol) and a beautiful coat of green paint.

Now here’s another 110 – and another coat of the same green paint. Coniston Green, which will be familiar to anyone
who’s ever bought a Defender from new, but with a magnificent deep gloss finish that won’t.

Two similar 110s, then – but very different, too. This one’s a Station Wagon rather than a ragtop, and it’s left-hand drive – which is a bit ironic, because the American one was a right-hooked whereas this Land Rover is the work of Arkonik, the Somerset-based Defender restorer whose high-end refurbishments continue to fi nd an eager market on the
far side of the Atlantic.

Now, Somerset is not The North. But the 110’s name might put you in mind of all that. Dorne, Westeros, King’s Landing, Winterfell, The North… all places we became familiar with during the eight-year reign (honestly, it really was only eight years) of Game of Thrones.

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There was a time when there were plenty of V8-engined Land Rover 90s and 110s in the world. People were forever using them as a way of making their painfully slow old motors sound nice and go well. The advent of affordable second-hand Tdi lumps did a number on that but while people have long since-stopped using the Rover V8 for
repower, those that survive still retain that same aura of specialness about them.

An LS unit out of a crate is all very well, but you’ll never make a Corvette out of a Defender – and you’ll never make a Rover V8 out of anything else, regardless of how much power it’s got.

There are Rover V8s, though, and there are Rover V8s. One instinctively knows when a thing is right, as the advert for some sort of posh drink used to say, and that’s very much the case with Defenders. There are some very nice repowers around – but an original is a cut above.

Even today, if you fi nd a V8 90 or 110 it’s likely that the engine first saw service under the bonnet of a long-since deceased SD1 or Range Rover and the vehicle started life as a 2.25 (if it’s proper old) or some sort of 2.5.

The old nat-asp diesel was a favourite for hooking out back in the day, and of course the pre-Tdi Turbo-Diesel was always up for a game of Moths in Your Wallet. And it must be said, the workmanship on some of the repowered V8 Defenders we’ve seen has been outstanding.

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Project Resolute is the latest remanufactured off-roader from Legacy Overland. The US company normally specialises in
much older donor vehicles – but then, few things age as fast as a Land Rover Discovery 2…

We look at vehicles built by Legacy Overland quite frequently in these pages. The company is best known
for taking old Range Rovers, G-Wagens and Land Cruisers in various states of old age and remanufacturing them as newly restified fantasy wagons whose breadth and depth of engineering excellence is matched only by the imagination with which they’re specced and finished. It’s a company that makes top-end trucks and has a clientele to match.

So we were a little taken aback when they told us that their latest build. Project Resolute is not yet a quarter of a century old – a spring chicken by the company’s usual standards. However if you know your Discovery 2s, you’ll know that they were capable of getting into a state where they needed restoring after about five years, let alone 25.

This 2001 example was, in Legacy Overland’s own words, ‘worn but willing – a veteran of daily miles and off-road
trails, ready for its second wind.’ Which is precisely what they set out to give it.

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We had a Chinese pick-up truck once before. It arrived about a dozen years ago or something like that; it was called the Great Wall Steed and, well, of the four on the Trader at the time of writing the most expensive was a very low miler from 2017 and the guy was after five and a half for it.

Now it’s time for another attempt. The Poer300 is also from China and it’s also from Great Wall, or GWM as they now
want to be known. They company is also responsible for an electric car called the Funky Cat, so Poer300 (it’s pronounced ‘power’) is at least not the worst name out there. It’s better than Steed, too.

And that’s not the only area in which it improves on the sad old effort from back then. This time, it feels like it was made with European punters in mind. In fact, this time it feels like it was made with people who don’t want their truck’s cabin to fall apart in their hands in mind, which has got to be a good thing.

To begin at the beginning, the Poer300 is a double-cab available solely with a 2.4-litre turbo-diesel engine and 9-speed auto box. It has 183bhp and 354lbf.ft at 1500rpm, it’ll carry 1050kg and tow 3500kg (with a GTW of 6200kg) and the man says you’ll get 32.6mpg out of it.

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On 30 November 1954, Land Rover presented Sir Winston Churchill with an 80th birthday present to remember – a new 86” Series I. Registered UKE 80, the vehicle remained in the former Prime Minister’s family following his death in
1965, finally being sold on by his son in 1973, and today it resides in the Emil Frey Classics Museum at Safenwil, Switzerland, alongside a number of other Land Rovers and Range Rovers.

Recently, the museum was visited by a team of experts from Land Rover Classic. Sounds like a pretty good work trip – but they weren’t just there on a jolly. Their goal was to analyse the Series I’s paint, take samples of its interior trim (we do hope they asked first) and examine every aspect of its period details.

Why? Because the latest limited-edition Works Bespoke commission from Land Rover Classic is the Churchill Edition – a
run of just 10 vehicles inspired by the great man’s original. The idea came from Emil Frey itself – a classic car specialist
which, in addition to its museum, is an approved Land Rover Classic retailer.

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Bordeau is an unusual name for a Land Rover. Or for anything, really. At first glance, if you know anything at all about French geography (or wine), you might think it sounds like it’s missing the X-factor. Actually, it’s probably safe to say that noone’s missing the X Factor.

Anyway, as it turns out Bordeau is still a word, even when it doesn’t have an X on the end of it. It’s a type of leather, a species of sage that gardeners get excited about, the name of a company that makes rilettes and other healthy French delicacies and, on a slightly less exotic level, a surname. The 24,665th most common surname in America, in fact, which is something I already knew and in no way did I Google it.

First manufactured in 1988 and now manufactured again in 2025. That’s because Project Bordeau the latest piece of work to emerge from Legacy Overland, a company that doesn’t just tart up old 4x4s – it remakes them from scratch, bringing them up to today’s standards as it goes and adding whatever luxuries and amenities its customers want. These are, needless to say, vehicles that are built to order.

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We tested the petrol engined Jeep Avenger a few months ago – and to our surprise we didn’t like it very much.
There wasn’t a great deal about it to dislike (though we were horrified to find that the bodywork in the engine compartment hadn’t been fully painted) but very little to get excited about. Our conclusion was that the
EV version is better.

Here, we’re taking a quick look back at why. The Avenger was initially launched here as a 4×2 EV, with the aforementioned petrol model coming along later – in addition to an e-Hybrid and the all-wheel drive plug-in 4xe.

List prices start at £26,050 (petrol), £27,050 (e-Hybrid), £29,999 (EV) and £31,219 (4xe). So the EV is not bustingly expensive as EVs go, even when you climb the range (there are three models, with the top Summit model giving you the full works for £33,999).

It has 156bhp and 192lbf.ft, it’ll go from 20%-80% in less than 30 minutes with a fast charger and it’ll cover up to 248 miles on a brimmed battery. And. overall, the Avenger has been responsible for something like a tripling of Jeep’s sales in the UK, so whether you prefer to plug in or fill up it’s clearly doing great things as a vehicle.

Now, we know that the bulk of the people who choose vehicles do so based on things like its looks, cabin, media system, brand name and whether you can get it in a nice colour. Jeep certainly ticks the brand name box and the Avenger collects all the others, too.

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Kia was Britain’s fourth biggest car brand when it launched the EV9 a year and a half ago. Now it’s the
third biggest, having registered 62,005 new vehicles in the first half of 2025 – with just over half of them being either
HEVs, PHEVs or full EVs.

Volumes like that come from everyday vehicles like the Sportage (Britain’s second highest selling car of any kind), Picanto (up 35% on the same time last year) and EV3 (more UK retail sales than any other EV). But Kia’s halo model is doing very nicely too.

As we’ve said before, the EV9 is a statement vehicle for Kia. It’s a properly premium SUV with exceptional equipment
and build quality – and in the GT-Line S AWD 6-seat form tested here, it retails at £77,035. That’s at the bottom end of BMW X5 and Merc GLE money and mid-range for a Land Rover Discovery or Lexus RX, which instantly makes it look like pretty strong value – particularly as it’s getting you an EV (which, like them or not, still cost more up front than the petrol or diesel equivalent).

It’s still quite a sum for a Kia, however, especially to those of us old enough to remember the brand’s fi rst decade or so of selling el cheapo snoozemobiles like the Clarus and Magentis.

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The SV Bespoke commissioning service, which allows Land Rover’s wealthiest clients to have their vehicles built to a
specification unfettered by the boundaries of cost or taste, has been extended to include the Range Rover Sport. Previously available only on the Range Rover itself, the service creates one-of-one editions by offering a massively extended range of design options.

These include up to 230 gloss, matte and satin paint finishes, 1500 interior combination with 15 different main
colours and various ‘exquisite design details’ including unique wheels, veneers, kick plates and seat embroidery as
well as hand-forged two-piece precious metal script badging.

If all that isn’t enough, there’s also a match-to-sample paint service for clients who ‘wish to truly express themselves.’
Or just want a car that’s exactly the same colour as their favourite pants.

In addition, every Range Rover Sport ordered (Land Rover says ‘crafted’, which may be less pretentious than ‘curated’
but is still apt to make you sneer) with Bespoke gloss paint also gets a new ‘glass-like’ gloss fi nish. This is created
using and a custom flatting and polishing process along with a thicker top-coat lacquer – sounds like they’ve borrowed a technique from the world of hot rods there, and those are probably the best presented cars in existence so that’s no bad thing.

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You might have thought the Octa was already the ultimate version of the Defender. But now here’s the Octa Black, ‘combining extreme all-terrain performance with an even bolder appearance.’

Powered by the familiar 635bhp twin-turbo V8 engine, like every Octa this comes with 6D Dynamics suspension
and a special Octa setting in its drive mode palette. What sets it apart is the use of either gloss or satin black on as
many as 30 different exterior elements, to go with the Narvik Black paint that comes as standard.

Said elements include the front undershield and rear scuff plates, which are finished in satin black powder coat,
the satin black recovery eyes and the gloss black quad exhaust tips. Even the traditionally green Land Rover oval on
the grille is black with darkened silver script, while the silencer and centre box covers and optional towbar (electrically
deployable, natch) have a gloss or satin black finish.

The brake calipers? Black, with silver script. The wheels in front of them? A choice of 20” forged alloys or 22” gloss
black jobs, with black centre caps and dark grey Defender script.

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