Imagine being in the new Land Rover Defender’s marketing team, and the trepidation you’d feel every time you clicked on a car magazine’s website or your social media feed – to find another shaky, grainy picture that’s meant to look like your new car. 

First came ‘the interior’, a picture of an early development car with ‘stop’ and ‘go’ written on the pedals, since when Land Rover says the inside has been developed rather a lot. 

Then last week it was ‘the Lego’, a picture apparently from the box of a Technic Lego set of the new Defender. Now, I grant you it’s easier to replicate a Defender in Lego than it is most cars, but before reckoning on the accuracy of the picture, have a look at what Lego thinks a Porsche 911 GT3 RS looks like. 

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And – at the point of writing – most recently it was ‘the instrument pack’. The new Defender will, it seems, have a wee picture of its own profile on start-up, between the two main dials, which was covertly snapped the other day. OR WAS IT COVERT? Yes, it probably was. 

Land rover defender 8350d

Now, I’ve seen it suggested that Land Rover will not have been quite so surprised to have seen this image appear in the news, because they’ll have surreptitiously planted them, just to build anticipation. I’m not sure I believe that. 

Not when you hear the lengths manufacturers stretch to make their cars look good, at any rate. Design teams sometimes instruct hired photographers (not press ones, obvs) which angles and distances they should shoot from – closer distorts the details. Or whether it’s allowed that there’s space between body and ground, accentuating ride height. And when it comes to the Defender’s marketing shoot, won’t somebody think of the cost of hiring mountain bikes and sheepdogs, to have all of that gazumped by a grainy picture from a toy box? I can’t see there’s a logic to it.