Best for: Desirability
This biggest Land Rover Defender ought to have been a candidate for the top of this chart, because while it’s expensive, its cleverly configurable interior presents the option of as many as eight seats.
Buy a long-wheelbase, five-door Defender 110 and JLR will offer you a choice of five, six or seven passenger seats, while the elongated Defender 130 can seat eight in a 2/3/3 formation.
Sadly, for legislative reasons, you can’t order the latter with the jump seat in between the driver and front seat passenger, which would have made it a nine-seater (and, in the UK at least, in need of registration as a minibus).
Even without this as an official option, though, this car has impressive versatility. The seven-seat Defender has third-row seats that are a little smaller than those of the related Land Rover Discovery’s but still perfectly usable by children, teenagers and smaller adults.
In the 130, you can take all eight on board and still have a very usable 400-litre boot, although the trade-off is the car’s vast 5358mm length that makes it something of a squash and a squeeze in most parking spaces.
This is also an expensive car, with even the very cheapest models starting from more than £70,000. But unlike the old Defender, it drives nearly as well as almost any luxury SUV of its size and type, has a broad range of modern electrified powertrains and has off-road capability to spare.