Why do rebuilt 30-year-old Land Rover Defenders draw attention, curiosity and bids of $200,000 and up?
Partners in a thriving car restoration business in Cabot spent 30 minutes answering that question last week. The British off-road classics are status symbols, they said: unique, customized, nostalgic and prized by a tight-knit community of enthusiasts.
“And they look so cool,” said Whitney Waymack of Little Rock.
She’s a partner with her filmmaker husband, Dan Waymack, and auto specialist Cody Smith in the Cabot venture, Defenderworks.
When the Waymacks drove Whitney’s own souped-up Defender to Home Depot recently, Arkansans gathered around it in the parking lot, marveling and asking what it was. “People just flock to it, and these aren’t even Land Rover people,” Waymack said.
Defenderworks is a division of Overland Autoworks, a restoration enterprise the same partners founded in 2019.
The Waymacks and Smith got into the business in the same way, by buying old Land Rovers for themselves. After making his purchase in 2013, Smith quickly realized he’d go broke if he couldn’t learn to repair it.
“I started going to a little indie shop and getting parts, and they eventually asked if I wanted to go to work there,” Smith said. “I found I kind of had a knack for it.”
So he gave up a security and bail bonds career, then met the Waymacks when they were searching for someone to restore their old Defender.
Over four years, the company has restored dozens of cars that have sold for $100,000 or more. The first two Defenders it refurbished sold on the same day in 2021 — for nearly $200,000 each.
Overland operates out of a former jet boat factory on 3 acres in Cabot, where the company modifies classic vehicles from Chevy C-10 pickups and Ford Broncos to Corvettes and Jaguars — even a candy apple-red 1951 Ford.
But when the growing craze for old Land Rovers started to overwhelm Overland, Smith and the Waymacks founded Defenderworks to meet the market.
Roadside Attraction
The company’s Land Rovers, parked outside the garage, eventually started to lure people off the freeway to stop in and ask why a little Arkansas town should have so many old English rarities on display.
“It has become a way of life for people,” Dan Waymack said, “and they’re willing to pay premium prices.”
The trick, the partners say, is making the old cars modern, comfortable and spotless, but with a throwback look. All of the workings may be new, but the exterior has to retain the vintage look immortalized in James Bond movies and news clips of Queen Elizabeth II motoring around Scotland.
The Cabot shop takes eight to 12 months to extensively rebuild a Defender. Some aficionados want them rebuilt to factory specifications, a far less expensive job.
But the shop’s newest Defender, barely 25 years old and sourced from Spain, received every nut and bolt, new air conditioning, leather seats and a roll cage, the partners said.
The current fervor for vintage Defenders prompted a Wall Street Journal feature last month headlined “Ultimate Status Symbol: A $300,000 Souped Up Land Rover, Warts and All.”
But Smith and the Waymacks say the headline wasn’t entirely accurate. The Defenders commanding top dollar have no blemishes. “They’re bespoke cars,” Smith said. “The clients come in and say what color they want them painted, what they want the interiors to look like, what features they want. Every one of the jobs is a one-off.”
Matching Defenders
The process can include repainting, engine swaps, interior upgrades and customization. One buyer had his Defender repainted three times to match the color of other cars he’d acquired. Another wanted just about every exterior appendage in gleaming chrome.
Another customer, a New York investment banker, paid a combined $400,000 for two restored Defenders from Defenderworks, one for his home in New Jersey and the other for his vacation house in Florida. He wanted matching cars to take to the coffee shop on Saturdays, the partners said.
Customers tend to be affluent and from out of state, Dan Waymack said. Many come from Texas or Florida.
Some clients have the shop work on old models just to keep them on the road. Their condition doesn’t warrant restoration, but drivers want a few more miles out of them. Some Defender lovers take them off-road as originally intended; others prefer getting curious and envious looks from drivers in line at the Starbucks drive-through window.
The cars Defenderworks imports for restoration are all more than 25 years old. Later models run afoul of U.S. import rules requiring safety features like airbags. The Cabot company keeps people on the lookout for old Defenders in Europe, and it snaps up as many as it can.
“If I could find enough, we could sell a dozen or more a year,” Dan Waymack said.
Years ago, he said, a 25-year-old Defender in Europe could be bought for $15,000. Now the going rate is closer to $30,000, and transport, taxes and fees add $2,500 to $5,000 per vehicle. Then come many painstaking months of Defenderworks’ precision craft in restoration.
Original Defenders were built with relatively small diesel engines, 90 to 95 horsepower. For about half of its customers, Defenderworks installs 500- to 600-horsepower engines sourced from a company in Southern California.
The shop, which has seven restoration specialists, equips many of the vehicles with plush carpeting, upholstery, chrome and air conditioning. “We’re giving them the creature comforts,” Dan Waymack said. “Everybody wants air conditioning, and they want these cars to be showcases.”
Whitney Waymack stressed another modification. The company converts almost all of the Defenders from right-hand to left-hand drive, better for dashing down American rather than British roads.
In Britain, the cars are basically tractors, often equipped with bulldozer blades, Smith said. But the upscale market demands accessories like backup cameras, electric windows and high-end sound systems.
Smith’s Journey
Smith, 37, didn’t work on cars as a youth at Sylvan Hills High School. But they are his life now. “I like getting to build something that makes people smile,” he said. “It’s nice to sit down and work on an engine or put in an interior. I think it’s very therapeutic.”
He enjoys connecting with Defender fans at Land Rover events, but he said most customers discover Defenderworks through social media or word of mouth. “Some tell friends of theirs who are part of that community,” Smith said, describing devotees who gather online and in person to see others’ custom Defenders and show them off. “There’s a lot of camaraderie.”
Most of his company’s Defenders sell on the auto auction website bringatrailer.com, he said. Bring a Trailer of San Francisco, which started out selling cars that basically wouldn’t run, has evolved into a website where million-dollar sales are not uncommon. “It’s kind of a misnomer,” Dan Waymack said. “A whole lot of cars sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars there.”
The auction site lets sellers set a reserve price, a minimum for making a sale. Only one of Defenderworks’ cars failed to exceed the reserve price, selling just below it after some haggling with the buyer. “It was the one Defender that we’d painted red,” Dan Waymack said. “I’ll never do another red one.”
Whitney Waymack spends her days at the Cabot shop, handling office work, sweeping and doing interior tasks on the cars. Dan Waymack gives her and Smith full credit for the company’s success.
His own involvement is limited to a little work a few days a month.
“My business is Waymack & Crew,” he said. That’s the downtown Little Rock content production company where Waymack is CEO and film director. “We’ve never been busier. I’ve loved cars my whole life, and this is an enjoyable sideline. But shooting for Waymack & Crew keeps me running pretty hard.”
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