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The Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance is coming up this month, and while that means the world’s prettiest, rarest and most expensive cars will come out of the woodwork to compete, it also means auction houses will be hocking some pretty remarkable wares. Gooding & Company, for example, has some pretty incredible stuff, like a one-of-a-kind Bertone-designed Porsche 911, but one of the more underrated lots is this 1995 Land Rover Defender. Which is pretty much perfect.
This Defender is a NAS (North American Spec) model, which is a rare beast to begin with, seeing as just a few thousand were brought stateside. Adding to that rarity is the fact that this model comes in Arles Blue with gray tweed cloth interior, a rare configuration; Gooding & Company claims only 90 examples exist. Now, factor in that this is a one-owner car, with incredibly low mileage, that has been given a reworking by the acclaimed specialists at East Coast Rover in Rockland, Maine.
That entails a number of tasteful, though barely perceptible improvements. For one, the stock 3.9-liter V8 was ditched in favor of a 4.6-liter Land Rover V8, as well as stainless steel fuel, brake, oil filter and clutch lines. The Defender was then bestowed with a heated windshield, auxiliary Hella lights, a 9,000-lb Warn winch, a factory air-conditioning unit and a resealed roof. Defenders, cool as they are, are not exactly the most comfortable machines to live with, but most of the improvements here are a remedy to that.
The listing explains that the odometer displays fewer than 8,000 miles, and while that doesn’t clarify if that’s throughout the Defender’s entire life or just since the engine swap, it’s still mind-bogglingly low, practically brand new. Hopefully whoever acquires this machine (which could be you!) uses the truck as it was intended and puts many more miles on there, but given the eye-watering $140,000 to $160,000 estimate we wouldn’t exactly count on it. Still, we’d be happy to be proven wrong.
