Reports say that the next-generation Land Rover Defender will be built outside of the UK. The current Defender is still being built in the UK at Solihull, but production of the 67-year old icon is set to end this December, and Jaguar Land Rover is said to be looking at Poland and Hungary as potential sites for a new facility to build the Defender's successor.
The first location possibility is Gyor in Hungary - the site will allow JLR to take advantage of a supplier base set up by Audi for local production of the Audi TT coupe and the automaker's four-cylinder engines. The second possible site is somewhere in Poland, but sources have not been specific about the location.
The move to the Continent is reportedly due to the automaker's UK facilities already stretched at maximum capacity to produce the Evoque and the Discovery Sport. In any case, it has been earlier reported that the anticipated replacement will not go on sale until 2019 at the earliest, and it won't be based on the 2011 DC100 concept, which was said to have been cancelled.
At this point, Land Rover is said to be considering keeping the current Defender alive and going for non-European markets by moving production somewhere else once the run at Solihull ends. One possible solution is to build the vehicle in India, where JLR's parent company, Tata Motors, is based. Producing it in India will lower production costs.
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