Land Rover Defender No Time to Die Stunt Car 2020 Review

One engineer we spoke to joked that the true cost of the Land Rover Defender 110 P400 X used in No Time to Die probably amounted to $1 billion.

In truth, he was only half-joking. In order to produce a useable set of vehicles for the movie, Land Rover had to develop the Defender from scratch and then build a whole factory in Slovakia to produce it.

In the end the schedule was so tight that the first car to roll off the assembly line – and should have spent its life in a museum – was air-freighted, along with nine following Defenders, straight to Scotland.

The Bond gig was so important to the British car-maker that stunt director Lee Morrison was invited early on to drive a prototype to ensure it was fit for purpose.

Morrison, who first starred in Tomb Raider (2001) as a stunt double, knows his stuff and said he was so blown away by the Defender’s toughness, he claims he just let the engineers “get on with it”.

Once fully built, those first 10 cars then had the indignity of having most of their interior stripped out, including all the infotainment, seats, carpets and headlining.

In came a full roll cage and an FIA-approved fuel-cell. Sticking with the rally theme, Morrison insisted that the Defender also be fitted with a hydraulic handbrake to add extra agility in the heat of battle and cope with holding it on a 65-degree incline for hours at a time.

After scouting the Scottish mountain, the stunt team also asked Land Rover to add a steel panel for the roof to give the driver added protection against the threat of a tree stumps penetrating the Land Rover’s interior during rollover. Finally, thicker aluminium bash plates lie beneath to give the Defender X even more protection.

Incredibly, the Defender was judged so strong that no additional strengthening was added and, amazingly, considering scenes involving a high-speed chase across a rocky riverbed, the 110 rides on its stock air suspension.

With practically no computer-generated imagery (CGI) used in any of the pursuits involving the Land Rover, the only fakery involved in the Defender is the rear wheel carrier, which is actually a replica made out of plastic.

There were concerns the real thing might tear itself off the rear door after repeated jumps and the thought of a runaway full-size spare rolling out of control towards a camera crew at more than 100km/h didn’t bear thinking about.

As far as options go, the James Bond producers plumped for a set of dark 20-inch alloy wheels and matching menacing Santorini Black paint, and that’s it.

Land Rover is unlikely to offer the Stunt Pack for the Australian market, but if it does introduce it as an aftermarket option expect it to cost around $30,000 on top of the $137,690 charged for the regular Defender X.

Since the stunt cars underwent an official Land Rover conversion, the stripped-out, stone-chipped, dented Defender Xs are all backed by a five-year/unlimited-kilometre factory warranty, while servicing for the Land Rover SUV is spaced across 12-month and up to 25,000km intervals, depending on stunt use.

If you’re planning on barrel-rolling down a mountain, the Defender X Stunt cars are all highly recommended.

Of course, it helps that its roll cage and safety system were developed with the help of people who crash cars for a living.

When the Defenders and the stunt team landed in the Cairngorms in Scotland’s Highlands the conditions were appalling and the deeply soaked peaty landscape tested the Land Rover’s Terrain Response 2 ($2210) electronic trickery and all-wheel drive hardware to the very limits.

“Every day the set looked and drove different from the day before; it was horrendous,” Morrison says. “Some days we hid in the Defenders from midge attacks, they really became home. I’m really attached to 004.”

The British stuntman also praised the hardware that came standard with the Defender X, which includes a locking centre and rear differential, plus its ability to raise its ride height to provide a respectable 291mm of ground clearance. There was also plenty of opportunity, with the amount of rain the team endured, to test its wading potential (up to 900mm.)

If a vehicle did get stuck, the Defender’s standard 3500kg hauling ability meant it would only ever be briefly.

Sadly, without an infotainment screen (it was junked), the drivers had to do without the handy external camera and didn’t have the option of Apple CarPlay or Android Auto.

Sensibly, considering the fast-paced action, Morrison chose the flagship P400 version of the Defender 110 for stunt duties.

That means the Land Rovers came equipped with the car-maker’s latest turbocharged 3.0-litre inline six-cylinder Ingenium petrol engine.

While the replica Aston DB5 had to run an uprated BMW M3 powertrain, the Defender needed no under-bonnet massaging especially when, as standard, it produces a punchy 294kW and has a muscular 550Nm torque peak.

Combined with an eight-speed automatic, without modifications the civilian P400 is capable of a very brisk 0-100km/h sprint of just 6.1 seconds.

But considering the amount of weight shed to package the stunt car’s cage, it’s thought a Bond-prepped Defender could shave at least another 0.5sec off that time, making it seriously quick.

There’s an art to clambering into the No Time to Die Defender 110 and one we never quite mastered.

The key to a successful ingress is to carefully navigate the large amount of protective scaffolding and involves standing on the door sill before swinging one leg over the bar at a time.

But beware, unseen dangers lurk on the other side.

Lower yourself into the driving seat with too much vigour and both the unpadded Sabelt race seat, or worse, the four-point harness’ buckle bite hard.

Once seated, and you’ve blinked through the tears, it’s good that the driver sits low in the cabin, well beneath the normal Defender.

Morrison has been putting his neck on the line for your viewing pleasure for almost two decades and has probably jumped, skidded, drifted and crashed (on purpose) more cars than you’ve had hot dinners.

I’m in safe hands, but despite his wealth of experience and the fact while at work he regularly laughs in the face of danger, today he looks borderline terrified as I thumb the starter.

Instead of a meaningful six-cylinder growl there’s the screeching sound of the fuel pumps whirring into life.

Morrison first piece of advice went like this: “We spent more than a month in these cars, six, seven days a week. We almost lived in them. I love this car. Please don’t break it.”

Flattening the throttle, we approach a large muddy paddock that looks like it’s been scatter-bombed with hay bales. It hasn’t, instead this is the test track that’s been hastily created for our brief drive.

Apparently, there is track here somewhere, but plenty of extra excursions from the racing line means it’s impossible to tell.

Barking directions over the noise of that fuel pump, which is now joined by a cacophony of mud and gravel bombarding the undercarriage, progress is stunted but the Defender’s P400 powertrain still manages to impress, offering both incredible traction and surprising levels of performance in a straight line.

As soon as I loosely figure which direction I’m going, I attempt a lurid drift. Of course, it goes badly wrong.

Turn-in, lift-off, letting the nose find some grip, I punch the throttle... Nothing. Instead there’s full ESP intervention and no power until I wind off some lock.

Morrison claims that throughout the Bond shoot the standard vehicle’s ESP remained on, but I doubt that very much, especially with that irresistible hydraulic handbrake on view.

Not that we aren’t having fun. We do coax smaller, less ambitious drifts and the Defender X remains surprisingly adjustable and nowhere near the animal I expected.

As we build up confidence we get quicker too, and Morrison even begins to chip in with “flat-out, flat-out”.

Sadly, no jumps were available on the day, but on set the Land Rover’s biggest leaps were carried out at speeds of more than 65km/h, with the biggest 30-metre jumps repeated up to eight times for the cameras.

Aside from a few broken screens, the Defenders were utterly reliable too.

And just how many of the priceless stunt cars survived the shoot?

“All of them,” says Morrison.

I thought some of them had been deliberately crashed, not least in the ad used for the British market.

So when asked to clarify, Morrison told us: “I didn’t say all of them are driveable, but Land Rover hasn’t properly unpacked the cars yet; they’re currently in storage because of COVID.”

Morrison and his team of stunt drivers insist the Land Rover Defender 110 X is a close as you can get to being a “perfect stunt car” straight out the box, a glowing recommendation from a man who has probably wrecked some of the best cars money can buy.

It was always ambitious of Land Rover to commit to using as standard a car as possible and all the more remarkable how well they (well, the cars we drove) survived the ordeal.

That’s something that couldn’t be said for the poor Aston DB5 mongrel, which since the shoot has ended is so torn up from its Bond experience it’s incapable of driving in a straight line.

Land Rover could have built convincing ‘silhouette’ Defenders around a space-frame chassis, powered by cheap Chevy V8s, but it didn’t.

Instead, it used the experience as yet another tool to help it develop what must be one of the world’s toughest, most capable off-roaders.

In a world of CGI fakery, it’s refreshing the Land Rover Defender stunt car remains the real thing.

How much does the 2020 Land Rover Defender 110 P400 X Stunt Car cost?
Price: $1 billion (estimated)
Available: Never
Engine: 3.0-litre six-cylinder turbo-petrol
Output: 294kW/550Nm
Transmission: Eight-speed automatic
Fuel: 9.9L/100km (ADR Combined)
CO2: 220g/km (ADR Combined)
Safety rating: 007-proof