NWCC are renown for they’re background in the VW industry so when this Land Rover Defender turned up on our door we was all a little “out of our comfort zone.”
The vehicle was brought into us by an extremely loyal customer who we have worked with for several years, we were not prepared to say No on this project and felt we had a responsibility to build this vehicle for him.

We were lucky when our customer Ryan knew plenty with regards to what was cool and not for this truck, helping us with products, accessories and where to purchase these items.

First job after a deep clean and strip down was to remove the half bulkhead which entailed the entire roof being carefully removed and the chop to begin fully removing the sheet metal bulkhead and replacing with the tubular chassis bar.

These defenders are a pleasure to work on we must say with everything designed so simple and practical, adding in hardware like the Duel Battery system, front winch, side bars, roof rack, RECARO CS Defender specific front seats was all relatively simple. The tougher areas were things we do every day in a VW but we’re a lot more of a task in the defender, for example Skinz sound kill was applied floor to ceiling in this noisy truck literally wrapping the entire enteral rear body and cab area.
second layer of thermo closed cell foam was then applied over the top of the Skinz to ensure we deleted that road noise.
Applying the Trunkliner material to the walls and wheel arch tubs was again a little more involved where we had to create panels and wheel arch curved skeleton frames to create some curves for the materials to flow with no seams or joins spoiling the look.

A lot of first time procedures for the team on this truck but some cross over hardware from the VW T6 vans for example. Audison Audio upgrades, Nappa leather with custom tyre tread embossing, CTEK electrical management, 12v/USB/LED electrical circuits, window tints, Alcantara headliners/sun visors, design /fabrication to create centre console, roof glands.

Externally this vehicle was In lovely shape but a few areas did need some attention, this is where UPOL Black Raptor come into play allowing us to make components look fresh and coat them with a hard hitting surface. The whole rear bumper was removed allowing with tow bar, light grill, door plastic, entry threshold trims and whatever other bits which were looking a bit tatty all underwent the process.

We a started this project with no experience with regards to Defender but I feel the experience we have learnt along the way will come into play in other areas of the business.
Everything from the logo design to turning on the LED roof lamps went quite smooth with this build and we would be quite happy to work on another, in fact it would be a shame not too after gaining all the experience we did on this project.

A big shout out to some healing hands and heads with this project.
Ryan the owner for supporting us continually.
Phil for the amazing images
Recaro for the front seats
Four Car Audio for supplying and running the Audio install with us.
UPOL for the raptor guidance and tuition.