Contribution from Chuque "Q" Henry of

In 1993 Land Rover finally saw it's way clear to bring the Defender model to the USA. Those 500 Defender 110's are still highly sought after today, and LR wisely decided that it would take a stab at selling the Defender 90 to the US market. The marketing guru's noticed that you couldn't swing a LR Sales Guide without hitting a Jeep Wrangler, and decided that a soft-top variant of the Defender was the ticket. They added a beefy roll cage from Safety Devices, the growl of the 3.9l V8 and the NAS Defender 90 was born. They were hugely popular and sold like warm beer at a British car show resulting in a second run in 1995, the model I am writing about.

It is easy to distinguish the 1995 from other NAS Defender 90's. The 1994 model had a manual transmission and square taillights, in 1995 they retained the transmission, but swapped the square lamps for the more traditional round ones. In 1997 they switched to the automatic transmission and the 4.0l V8. None were brought to America in 1996, 1997 being the last year. That means that a quick check of lamps and a glance in the window will tell you every year of D-90

D-90 was the perfect combination of rugged construction and minimalist features for the off-road enthusiast. It also enables it to weed out the weak so that only the strongest owners survive. Many were bought as status symbols or toys so it's not surprising that after a year or so of abuse, most were traded in for a Range Rover or Discovery. The D-90 soft-top was a fantastic looking truck, but had large enough gaps in the build to allow a small child to fall out. If you lived in a cold climate as I did (9000' +) you might resort to drastic measures such as driving from inside a plastic garbage sack to keep warm. It lacked certain spunk up to, and could be overtaken by the wildlife on steep mountain climbs. In spite of these shortcomings, the truck had a way of endearing you to it and making you love it even more. On the trail is where this truck was at home, and could make you forget even the coldest buttox faster than you can say, "Hand me those clean underwear."

In America we have a style of off-road driving called rock crawling. This is basically taking a perfectly good truck and seeing how much of it you can scrape off on boulders that range from Grapefruit to Godzilla. This resulted in a great number of heavily modified D-90's that are designed to frolic in the rough stuff. The majority of these sport 35" tires and super flexible suspensions. Yet another example of the Defender's versatility and ability to take whatever it's sometimes half crazed owners can throw at it.

My vehicle went though several stages of off-road modification. I started off doing a lot of mild off road, and eventually got into the adrenaline junkie thrill of rock crawling. Whatever I asked of the Defender, it did, and did beautifully. It has a way of making every other vehicle you owned seem like mere transportation, as it was definitely something more.