Only in a place where the locals live in the shadow of volcanoes and eat sheep heads can you drive off the Hertz lot in a Land Rover Defender. In Iceland, renting a Defender is a deliberate choice. There’s no getting stuck with an “or similar.” The alternative is another Defender, lifted on 38-inch snow tires. Completely normal here.
With Britain’s most storied and soon-to-be-discontinued SUV but a credit-card swipe away, we couldn’t resist. We left the Keflavik terminal to find a white-on-black Defender 110 packing studded tires, a snorkel, a ladder, and an oversize roof rack. This was after testing Land Rover’s new soft-roader, the Discovery Sport, during the press launch on some of Iceland’s iciest roads (one journalist flipped his vehicle). We wanted an army-grade suspension, a roaring stick-shift diesel to drown stray thoughts, and one last chance to drive this burly truck before the arrival of its inevitably more-civilized replacement. The Hertz Defender does not like what the modern world has become, except in the stilted wilderness of Iceland.
With their black-beach moonscapes and towering glaciers, Iceland’s blond-haired inhabitants—who do enjoy that mashy, sheep paste known as sviðasulta—actually need 4×4 SUVs. Even with $7-a-gallon gasoline, Defenders are a common sight in Reykjavik, and they’re essential for driving outside the capital on Iceland’s unpaved roads. Suburban sybarites in America think they need SUVs to brave their winters. Icelanders owe their very lives to these trucks.
Yes, it’s true the Defender leans heavily in turns and its brakes are half-asleep, but on Icelandic roads where there are no guardrails and you could disappear at any moment into a white void, we learn to trust big D. We did not venture far off-road since it’s mostly illegal and the winter winds throw 80-mph curveballs, which threatened to blow the Defender’s boxy body into a ditch. Traction? A Defender on studs keeps sticking, which means you can place it atop a mountainous snowbank in the local gym parking lot while the other Icelanders pray you don’t crush their VW Jetta wagons on your way out. And it’ll push 90 mph without any moaning.
The Defender experience starts the moment you open the creaky door. In hand is a fob that looks like a keyless-entry fob, but the Defender has no power locks. Which means each door must be individually unlatched, including the swing-open tailgate. You do not slide the key into the driver’s door. You have to grind it inside with one fluid, hard pump so that it feels like the frozen key is about to break off. The lock mechanism on the fuel-filler cap did break off and sealed our tank shut, but we were able to reattach it after a few minutes.
Cranking the 2.2-liter turbo-diesel four is much easier. The engine warms up at a leisurely diesel pace, but the electric heated windshield and heated seats race to the fire. Those are the only indulgences. Unlike a Mercedes-Benz G-wagen, Land Rover never bothered with sound deadening or quilted the dash in diamond-stitched hide. Save for the electronically locking rear differential, everything is manual, including the six-speed gearbox and the two-speed transfer case. ABS and stability control are thankfully on board, but the only airbags are of the Ziploc variety, littered on the bare metal floor.
While line workers build Defenders no differently than when they lit their first joint to “Dark Side of the Moon,” they’ve nailed the formula. Long after Land Rover packs up the tooling and Hertz Iceland books its last rental, Defenders like these will keep running and reminding us why they’re so special among the seas of ordinary SUVs.
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