The Land Rover Defender Trophy Edition Has Steelies That Aren’t Steelies

We’re very big fans of the new Land Rover Defender – five years on from its launch, it’s still one of the most complete cars on sale, blending proper off-road ability with plenty of on-road refinement.

If you want to lean into the former aspect of its dual personalities, though, there’s a new special edition just for you, the Defender 110 Trophy Edition. The ‘Trophy’ in question is probably the Camel Trophy, an off-road endurance event held between 1980 and 2000 that used a succession of Range Rovers, old Defenders and Discoveries.

Title sponsor Camel, of course, is a cigarette brand, and Land Rover can’t exactly be seen to be promoting it these days. The Defender 110 Smoking Is Bad Edition doesn’t quite have the same ring to it, though, so Trophy Edition it is.

It’s certainly the Camel Trophy cars that have inspired Deep Sandglow Yellow, one of the two excellent colours the Trophy Edition comes in. The other is Keswick Green, which apparently “celebrates rural exploration in Defender’s UK homeland.” Both can be augmented with a matt paint protection wrap to stop them getting scuffed up when you go off-road.

Those new gloss black wheels may look like steelies, but they’re actually alloys merely designed to look like them. At 20 inches, though, they’re refreshingly small by modern SUV standards, and come wrapped in standard all-terrain rubber.

You’ll also find plenty of Trophy badging and decals inside and out, while the distinctive exposed metal beam on the Defender’s dash is colour coded to the exterior paint.

Should you be really serious about getting muddy, you can spec an optional Trophy Edition Accessory Pack. This brings an expedition roof rack, a fold-out roof ladder on the left, an extra storage locker on the right, bigger mudflaps and a snorkel intake. It’s a £4995 fitted option, exclusive to the Trophy.

The Trophy Edition comes in either D350 guise, with a mildly-hybridised 3.0-litre turbodiesel straight-six making 345bhp, or as a plug-in hybrid, pairing a 2.0-litre turbo petrol four-pot with an electric motor for a peak of 398bhp. It’s on sale now, with pricing kicking off at £89,810, including the Accessory Pack.