Custom Land Rover Defender 90 Convertibles Are Like Jeeps With Class
An open top, full leather interior, and an available supercharged V8. Are you convinced yet?
No matter how much you spend on it, a Jeep Wrangler never becomes ... nice. You need to start with something nicer, such as the Land Rover Defender 90, which Dutch coachbuilder Heritage Customs can remove the roof from and redo its interior for an open-top SUV that's as comfortable crawling as it is cruising.
Heritage calls the off-roader the Valiance Convertible, and it starts with the smallest in the lineup, the two-door Defender 90, as its donor vehicle. (We'd make sure it has the supercharged 518-horsepower V8.) It excises the SUV's roof to install a power-retracting convertible roof, then reinforces its chassis with a roll cage. But it's much more than a convertible conversion because it comes with a styling and interior overhaul that completely transforms the Land Rover's character.
Because Heritage is a coachbuilder, every conversion is heavily personalized. Clients can pick from a huge range of exterior themes, paint colors, and "Magic Metal" finishes that can coat panels in everything from powdered gold to titanium and even rust. They're available with various forged wheels, some of them steelie lookalikes, and include an interior with more leather than a fetish club.
Heritage lavishes the Defender's interior with cowhide, which wraps everything from the seats to the dashboard, door panels, the steering wheel, and even pads its roll cage. (The seats can be a special in-house design, too.) As you'd imagine, this much craftsmanship takes a long time to put together—at least three months—and it's priced accordingly.
We're talking the equivalent of $90,400, not including the donor vehicle. But y'know what, you're not gonna find many nicer beach cruisers than this—especially if you can find a way to get a rooftop tent on it. (That's your cue, Heritage.)
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