In October, the Poplar forests of Korla at the northern edge of the Taklamakan Desert in Xinjiang are coated in the richest gold of the year. Nearly 400 owners, about 200 Defenders drove from all over the country to the same Gobi desert. The farthest one started from Ningbo, covered 4,200 kilometers, and drove for a full ten days.

This is Land Rover Defender's fourth year of the "Defender Reaches All Corners" national expedition. From 2023 Yunnan Shangri-La, 2024 Ningxia Zhongwei, 2025 Gansu Dunhuang, to 2026 Xinjiang Korla, one stop per year, progressively penetrating China's most remote, desolate, and magnificent corners year by year.

I am very fortunate to be a witness for consecutive years. There are many reasons to like the Defender, but the core point is, it is never swept up by the industry frenzy and involution, always upholding its own unique brand faith. For so many years, the Defender has persisted in the most simple and extravagant thing: going to distant places no one else has explored, undertaking expeditions others dare not make.

That Foot on the Accelerator 78 Years Ago Was Never Released

Let's rewind time to 1955. That year, six students from Oxford University and Cambridge University did something that seemed nearly crazy at the time: driving two Land Rover Series I vehicles, departing from London, crossing Europe, the Middle East, South Asia, and driving all the way to Singapore. The full distance was 18,000 miles, approximately 29,000 kilometers, taking six months. They crossed deserts unrecorded on maps, waded through swamps with no roads, and the two vehicles were painted Oxford Blue and Cambridge Light Blue respectively.

This expedition, later known as "The First Overland", made the world realize for the first time: a vehicle is not just a means of transport, it can be the sole reliance of an expedition team.

64 years later in 2019, "The Last Overland" expedition team drove the same 1955 Land Rover Series I vehicle, traveling backwards from Singapore back to London. That 64-year-old veteran vehicle traversed tropical rainforests, extreme weather at minus 20 degrees Celsius, and altitudes over 5,000 meters, finally crossing the finish line exactly the same as in 1955.

78 years have passed. From Series I to today's Defender OCTA, the engine changed, the platform changed, screens got bigger, but that "road" extending from London to Singapore, from Shangri-La to Korla, has never been broken.

"Defender Reaches All Corners" itself is the continuation of this adventurous spirit in contemporary China.

In 2023, the first season kicked off in Yunnan Shangri-La; in 2024, the second season, 130 Defenders assembled in Ningxia Zhongwei, completing a grand expedition in the "Capital of China's Deserts"; in 2025, the third season delved into Dunhuang, with 136 owners forming an expedition team to cross the cultural oasis on the Silk Road. And by 2026, Korla's deserts, rivers, oases, and the Lop Nur village constituted the "testing ground" of this season.

The route design of this season itself is an attitude. The convoy departed from Korla, diving straight into the Taklamakan Desert. Sand ridges followed one after another, gravel, steep slopes, shallow and deep sand pits, the Defender's All-Terrain system handled everything without a ripple. Then came the wading section, river water overflowing wheel arches, the front end firmly plunging into the river center, pushing a wall of water. The 900mm rated wading depth here is not just a parameter, it is the confidence to "dare to go, and also return".

More interestingly, on the banks of the Tarim River appeared a Defender towing a speedboat. The rugged off-road vehicle suddenly had a sailor side; the speedboat raced on the river, the Defender followed on the bank. This was not an official planned performance, but a gameplay brought by the owner themselves. In the Defender community, adventure is never defined.

A Moat Built by Time

These Defender owners who traveled from afar, thousands of li away, might be the most energetic and adventurous group of owners I have ever seen. These Defender cars, clad in various domineering and high-turnout paint jobs, drove from bustling cities to the Gobi desert. The farthest owner drove a full ten days from Ningbo to arrive.

"In the UK, you hardly see such a scale of crossing, from Scotland to England is also only a thousand kilometers," said Jaguar Land Rover China CEO Han Shao-Shuai when mentioning these Defender owners, who crossed mountains and rivers, traveling more than half of China to gather together. From never meeting to chatting happily, he couldn't help but express surprise, "Global Defender owners share many commonalities, but in China, this passion appears exceptionally special."

There is a Chinese saying - Passion can withstand ten thousand waters and thousands of mountains. This Chinese sentence, British Han Shao-Shuai might not necessarily understand, but he repeatedly stated that this is a car owner culture that is very hard to replicate in other markets.

If subculture is the Defender's most gentle and solid moat. Then technical accumulation is the Defender's hardest armor to guard this gentleness. This Korla expedition was the most real test of strength. More precious is, Defender's off-roading has no template, not defined.

The Chinese car market of 2026 is not easy for any traditional luxury brand. Local brands enter the rugged off-road track with "Boxy" shapes, screens getting bigger, parameters being rated higher, prices becoming more competitive.

Facing the topic of "imitation", Han Shao-Shuai's attitude was surprisingly calm: "Regarding imitation, I would regard it as a form of respect. All successful luxury brands will be imitated, I am actually worried about the day when no one imitates us."

His confidence comes from a simple fact: appearance can be copied, soul cannot. "You can copy an appearance, but you cannot copy a brand's soul. You cannot copy 78 years of historical heritage, cannot copy deep engineering accumulation, and even less can you copy the culture of the car owner community. We are the originators, we will continue to lead the way forward."

78 years of accumulated adventurous experience and brand heritage, is a moat built by time, no one can master it in two or three years.

On a strategic level, the keyword given by Han Shao-Shuai is "Double" - the more difficult the times, the more double effort must be exerted on core advantages. The company has focused on the luxury SUV market above 700,000 yuan. In the first half of 2026, the proportion of the three core models Range Rover, Range Rover Sport, and Defender in the company's China business rose to 92%, the average transaction price of imported vehicles reached 1.018 million yuan. Meanwhile, the "Land Rover Defender Urban Camp" in Shanghai West Bund is trying to reach urban people who may not think of Defender first, but also love originality and community culture.

When a brand passes 78 years, the temptations and noise it faces will be more than ever before. But the answer given by the Defender has always remained unchanged: go to places others haven't been, do things others haven't done, and guard who you are.

When the sunset of Korla falls on the edge of the Taklamakan Desert, the headlights of two hundred Defenders light up in sequence, like a light strip extending from the depths of the Gobi. 78 years ago, when six university students departed from London, they probably never thought that their foot on the accelerator would, nearly eighty years later, bring a group of people to the desert in the westernmost end of China, watching the same sunset together.

This is the simplest look of adventurous faith: if the road is there, then go walk it. (Written by Wu Ma)