2023 Land Rover Defender Safety and Reliability

Both local safety authorities, the IIHS and NHTSA, have not yet evaluated the Land Rover Defender for crashworthiness. For now, an official safety rating does not exist. EuroNCAP gave the 2020 European Defender a five-star rating, so there is no reason to believe it won't achieve good results, once it's tested locally.

Even though it hasn't received a local safety rating just yet, the Defender should do well with its array of active and passive safety systems. All versions come with electronic traction control, dynamic stability control, automatic LED headlights, ABS/EBD brakes, and tire-pressure monitoring. In order to make off-roading as safe and convenient as possible, the Defender has low traction launch, Terrain Response, hill-descent control, and hill-launch assist. The airbag suite comprises six airbags, including side-curtain and thorax airbags.

Even on the base derivatives, Land Rover has equipped the Defender with many driver-assistance technologies like blind-spot monitoring, a 3D surround-view camera system, a 360-degree parking aid, wade sensing, lane-keep assist, forward-collision monitoring with emergency braking, a driver-condition monitor, traffic-sign recognition, and an adaptive speed limiter. Higher-spec versions have adaptive cruise control and a head-up display.

The 2021 Defender was recalled five times. The 2022 model was only recalled twice, for faulty seatbelt pretensioners and taillights. So far, the seatbelt pretensioner problem is the only one to have carried over to the 2023 model, so things certainly seem to be improving and general quality appears to be good. J.D. Power gives the 2023 Defender an overall rating of 78 out of 100, with a reasonable 80 for quality and reliability. The off-roader comes with a four-year/50,000-mile limited warranty should anything go wrong, with the powertrain covered for the same period/mileage. A six-year corrosion perforation warranty applies regardless of miles covered, but complimentary scheduled maintenance is not offered.