Life is sweet behind the wheel of the Land Rover Defender 130. I spent a couple of days with this wheeled colossus, and not once during the whole time did someone cut into my lane.

At junctions, other drivers waited patiently for it to lumber past before falling meekly into line behind me. Expressway dawdlers scurried out of my way submissively. It made Singapore feel like a different place altogether, a place filled with polite drivers.

That alone is worth the price of admission, which in this case is S$402,888 excluding certificate of entitlement. That’s a big number to be sure, but in exchange you get a mighty big car. All three versions of the Defender are large, but the 130 is so huge it feels like it should have its own postal code.

Nose-to-tail, it spans a mighty 5.38 m (though that does include the chunky spare wheel that hangs on the tailgate). It’s so long that slotting it into a parallel parking spot made me feel like a god behind the wheel, even if most of the credit belongs to the car’s excellent parking cameras. It even has a digital mirror that makes the spare wheel invisible.

The size comes in handy if you’ve been fecund. The 130’s 34 cm stretch over the Defender 110 creates enough room in the back for a third row of seats so you can fit eight people on board. That’s proper-sized people, too. The rear wheel arches take up a bit of space for feet, but there’s no shortage of headroom or knee room. The folk way back there get three proper seat belts, plus cupholders, small nets for stuff, air-con vents and even their own glass sunroof.

On days when you have more stuff than people to carry, it’s a cinch to tip the seats down. When you drop all six, it creates a whopping 2,291 litres of cargo volume, with a mostly flat loading floor.

A NEWSLETTER FOR YOU

Friday, 2 pm

Lifestyle

Our picks of the latest dining, travel and leisure options to treat yourself.

Sign Up

For all its size, the Defender 130 doesn’t drive like a truck. The engine, a lovely six-cylinder thing with a voice full of culture, is boosted by both an electric supercharger as well as a turbocharger, so it really pulls like it means business. It may be big and heavy, but the Land Rover stomps along in a way that feels fit and energetic.

Ok, the roadholding is so-so at best, and it’s not hard to get the tyres chirping through a corner, but the steering’s lightness does give the Defender a sense of daintiness on the move. More to the point, no one buys a car like this to tackle the twisties. Rather, it’s the kind of machine you want to be in when the zombie apocalypse finally hits.

Apart from looking solid enough to flatten hordes of the walking dead, the Defender has low-range gears to crawl up or over anything. It has a slew of driving modes that tweak the suspension and traction systems to deal with any surface. Its air springs can hike it up high enough to wade through 90 cm of water.

More useful is those same springs’ ability to make the Land Rover duck low and slip safely into car parks with only 1.9 m of ceiling height. Things like that make this car an easy one to live with, along with the 11.4-inch touchscreen system’s user-friendliness, the physical buttons that make using the climate system so easy, the cabin’s profusion of storage trays and bins (including a refrigerated compartment), and so on.

Such practicality makes the Defender 130 an easy car to sell on the spouse (or yourself, for that matter): it’s huge inside and the third row is usable, the boot is enormous and the cabin is well thought out. As family cars go, you could do far worse.

But let’s not kid ourselves. The real reason for wanting a Defender 130 is the all-conquering presence that results from its bulk and a no-nonsense squint that would make even Chuck Norris break eye contact first.

You might not actually use the off-roading hardware either, but just knowing what your Defender 130 is capable of is surely enough to lift your shoulders. Go big or go home, the saying goes, but with this car it’s go big and go anywhere.

Land Rover Defender 130 3.0 HSE Engine 2,996 cc, 24-valve, twin-charged in-line six Power 400 hp from 5,500 to 6,500 rpm Torque 550 Nm from 2,000 to 6,500 rpm Gearbox 8-speed automatic 0-100km/h 6.6 seconds Top Speed 191 km/h Fuel Efficiency 12.3 L/100 km Agent Wearnes Automotives Price S$402,888 without COE Available Now