My biggest issue with the New Defender is its ugliness comes by virtue of try-hard ugly. Whereas the ugliness of the Ineos Grenadier is more of a austere ugliness.
Dont shoot it down design wise before seeing one in person. The car definitely has some presence and does look much better in real life, either on the showroom floor or passing by you on the road or parked on the curbside, than in pictures.
Its only until you sit on the driver' seat and/or a second row seat that you start planning on buying an extended warranty option for your LR4.
But it could be that for some the lack of CDP/stadium seating would not be a deal breaker and they would wanna give it a shot.
After witnessing first hand how clueless the top LR brass is (regarding their own products and customers' areas of interest as far as functionality) at that private event, I think they were just unaware that the CDP/Stadium seating, etc are not the sought after features in an LR product by offroaders only. The non-offroading, beverly hills/rodeo drive buyers are equally as interested in these key LR DNA attributes as the traditional LR off roaders.
Otherwise why even bother considering an LR 4x4? Both BMW and Audi make great AWD SUVs if you are ok with not having the CDP/stadium seating type of features.