Land Rover Defender L663 GVMs for Australia
There has been some confusion over Land Rover’s unusual, but not unheard of approach to GVM (Gross Vehicle Mass) for Australia. That’s because there’s different GVMs for different configurations. Today I checked with Land Rover, and they confirmed the GVMs for the Australian L663 Defender 110 are (direct copy-paste):
110
5 Seat – 3200kg
6 Seat – 3220kg
7 Seat – 3280kg
110 V8
5 Seat 3230kg
Why the difference? This is where I make educated guesses, but of course 7 seat vehicles have to carry more human weight than 5 seaters so they need a greater payload or at least not reduced and the weight of the third-row seats eats into payload. The difference in GVM might be the chassis, or suspension tune, or electronics…all of the above are typically varied as GVM changes.
So, a good idea would be to buy a 7-seater and pull the rear seats out to gain an extra 80kg of payload over the 5-seater. And you don’t need engineering approval to reduce seats from 7 to 5 in Victoria!
The Defender’s GVM is used as an example in this video about 3500kg tow ratings:
