Land Rover’s design chief Gerry McGovern has confirmed that the next Land Rover Defender will look “” the Lego-looking concepts we’ve seen, but he has said he wants to sell more the next time around. Way more.

As McGovern told :

“A lot of people love the idea of [the previous Defender], but they never buy one. While I’m a designer, and I love designing, I’m also a businessman. We need to build a critical mass in order to sustain ourselves in the long term and reinvest.”

Their story then says Land Rover will be looking to sell 100,000 Defenders a year “rather than 10,000.”

So, should we prepare to put the Defender in a bucket with the Jeep Cherokee Nissan Pathfinder and other “rugged” SUVs sacrificed for the sake of “sales?” I’ll reserve judgement. The Jeep Wrangler is still a Jeep and those are still printing money for Fiat-Chrysler.

Land Rover has maintained murkiness about if and when the Defender will return to the U.S. market, but current reports put the expected launch of the new model at late 2018 with two-door, four-door, and pickup variants in the mix for various markets as they sell today.

“When this vehicle comes out, people will know it’s a Defender, it’s a modern Defender,” says McGovern in AN’s post.

Image via Land Rover. Defender cookies, yum!

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