The new Land Rover Defender is an excellent car. It’s hugely capable off-road, comfy and refined on it, and available with a wide variety of engines and bodies, from the three-door, two-seat 90 Hard Top to the eight-seater Long Boi 130. It’s still not as diverse a lineup as the original Defender, though, which also came as a pickup or soft-top.
Dutch coachbuilding firm Heritage Customs has been busy putting that right since the new car launched in 2020. Having already designed a soft-top conversion for the short wheelbase 90, it’s now turned its attention to that other missing body style and created, to our knowledge, the first new Defender pickup truck.
Land Rover Defender Valiance Pick Up – front
It’s called the Valiance Pick Up, and uses the 130 as its base, utilising that car’s extra-lengthy bum area as the basis for a pickup bed. While we’ve only got CG renderings of it for now, it’s fair to say that you’d have us fooled if you told us it was an official Land Rover product.
The pickup body makes good use of the 130’s slightly odd proportions, although it naturally sacrifices its third row of seats (unless anyone’s brave enough to go full Subaru BRAT and chuck a pair of rear-facing jump seats in there).
Land Rover Defender Valiance Pick Up – overhead
In addition to the conversion itself, buyers will also get a custom paint job of their choice, as well as one the option of Heritage’s decal packs and wheel and tyre combos. It’ll also slather the interior with extra-nice leather.
The conversion will cost around €155,000 before VAT – that’s approximately £130k, £81k of which is the cost of a Defender 130 X-Dynamic SE. It’s not confirmed, but we assume that if you throw more money at Heritage, it’ll do the same for a higher-specced Def, like the utterly pointless but hugely likeable V8 version. Actually, a Defender turned into a Ford F-150 Raptor R rival sounds pretty appealing.
Land Rover Defender Valiance Pick Up – rear
Should you fancy a Valiance Pick Up, you can reserve a build slot now, and the entire process will apparently take around three months. Unlike the old Defender pickup, don’t bank on seeing one of these traversing the Yorkshire Dales with a couple of straggly sheep in the back.
