The new, 2020 Land Rover Defender was met with mixed reactions when it was first shown at the 2019 Frankfurt Motor Show in Germany. In a truly dramatic departure from tradition, it's the first-ever Defender to rely on unibody construction, giving it more in common with the Jeep Cherokee than the rugged Defenders of yesteryear. Even more controversial than its structure, however, was its styling, which bears little resemblance to its ancestors.

It's about the last vehicle that we would expect to see spawn a pickup variant, but that didn't stop designer Andrew Alewine from trying to imagine what such a vehicle might look like. Don't hold your breath for Jaguar Land Rover to go giving this thing the green light.

We might argue that aesthetically, this Land Rover Defender pickup truck concept shares more with the original Defender than the new 2020 version, especially since early Land Rover Series models did boast a pickup body style as seen in the images below. Instead, this creation appears to be a wholly original creation with no clear basis in automotive reality. It features the broad, squat proportions of the Hummer H1, a steeply raked grille, and a pair of four-projector headlamp clusters that give it an almost spider-like gaze.

We're not knocking it; there's a lot to love about this design, even if it is more "advanced military truck" than "classic British 4x4-gone-pickup."

Whether the Land Rover Defender's new direction is a stroke of genius or a misstep will ultimately be decided by the market, but in the US, we imagine there would be a line out the door to buy something like this Defender pickup, if JLR ever decided to make something like it. Lest we forget, this is the market that bought 14 years' worth of watered-down military Humvees and transformed the Jeep from humble WWII 4x4 to international off-road phenom.

It might even be a worthy competitor for GMC's forthcoming electric Hummer off-road truck.