Making Tracks: A Land Rover Defender That Glides Over Snow-Covered Backroads

Deep snow slows down most 4x4s, even when tire pressures are dropped into single-digits and lockers are engaged. It’s just tough to get traction and make headway when Old Man Winter comes knocking. But hip-deep snow, whether it’s the fluffy powder of mid-winter or the icy layered remnants of early spring, don’t put much of a crimp on Paul Champagne’s winter wheelin’.

Most of the year Paul’s ’02 Land Rover Defender 110 Station Wagon Country runs on 33-inch BFGoodrich All-Terrain T/A KO2s. But when the heavy snows start piling up in the Cascades near his home in Central Oregon, the all-terrains can be replaced with the vehicle equivalent of snowshoes: a set of 16-inch-wide Mattracks 105M1-A2 tracks, providing more than 3,000 square inches of surface contact area and reducing ground pressure to as little as 1.4 psi.

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Paul, and his wife Lacey, are the consummate outdoor-types. Each owns a successful business in Bend, and when the weekends come around, mountain biking, hiking, overlanding, kayaking, cross-country skiing, and outdoor photography are their emotional battery chargers—and the Defender 110 is their primary means to reaching those ends.

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The Land Rover is also nicely equipped to handle the pursuit of all their outdoor passions. The techs at Suspension Specialties in Bend, Oregon, upgraded the Rover’s 2.5L Td5 turbodiesel with an Alive Tuning’s Stage 5 billet turbo, headers, exhaust and programmer to bump the I-5’s power from 122 hp to 200 hp. The company also upgraded the intercooler. Then Suspension Specialties went to work replacing the stock coils and shocks with a 2-inch Terrafirma Suspension lift kit along with a matching 2-inch body lift. The combination provides both a pliant ride and plenty of clearance to handle tracks or tires, whichever they may choose for traversing the backroads year-round.

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Paul also had Suspension Specialties set up his Oxford Blue Defender with a Warn Zeon 12-S Platinum winch in a James Bond–style Spectre bumper, install the Front Runner Outfitter’s roof rack, and set on the Puma GRP hood. They also wired in a dozen seven-inch Auxbeam LED driving lights and swapped out the stock headlights for a set of CREE high-low beam LEDs to bring daylight to the darkest nights.

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Defenders usually aren’t known for their plush interiors, but Paul’s is different. He drove across town to Audiowerks to have power windows and locks installed, cover the Defender’s bare sheetmetal with Dynamat while the panels were off, and put in a ’05 Land Rover dash. Audiowerks also yanked the stock radio and gave the sound system a massive boost with a Pioneer head unit/navigation system driven by a 1,000-watt Kicker amp to a combo of Focal and Kicker speakers.

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It’s easy to spot the Champagne’s Land Rover in the drier seasons just because of the way it’s outfitted. It’s also easy to spot when the snow is deep: Look for track tread patterns on top of the snow leading up the snow-covered road instead of deep tire ruts—then look high on the ridgeline, a long way from where most 4x4s are stopped, for a bright-blue Defender on tracks.

At A Glance

General

Vehicle: ’02 Land Rover Defender 110 Station Wagon

Owner: Paul Champagne

Stomping grounds: Central Oregon

Build time: Six months

Drivetrain

Engine: 2.5L Td5 I-5 turbodiesel

Transmission: R380 5-spd manual

Transfer case(s): LT230T two-spd

Low range ratio(s): 3.32:1

Crawl ratio(s): 39.8:1

Front axle/differential: Stock, 3.54:1/open

Rear axle/differential: Stock, 3.54:1/open

Suspension

Front: Terrafirma 2-in-lift coil springs, Terrafirma gas shocks

Rear: Terrafirma 2-in-lift coil springs, Terrafirma gas shocks

Steering: Stock

Tires/Wheels

Tires: LT305/55R20 BFGoodrich All-Terrain T/A KO2

Wheels: 20x9 Stormer

Miscellaneous

Lighting: Auxbeam 7-in LED fogs/floods (12 total), CREE LED headlights

Armor: Front skidplate, Spectre winch bumper

Cool stuff: Mattracks 105M1-A2 tracks, Puma GRP hood, Warn Zeon 12-S winch, 1,000-watt sound system, Alcantera headliner, leather interior, Alive Tuning billet turbo, custom exhaust, Front Runner roof rack, 2-in Terrafirma body lift

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Driving Impressions

What’s it like to drive a tracked vehicle? Paul tossed us the keys to his 110 Defender during our jaunt up the snow-covered mountains for the photoshoot. It was a unique driving experience.

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First, driving a tracked 4x4 like this quickly made us an expert at 20-point turns and avoiding sidehills—a tractor-trailer rig has a smaller turning radius, and dozer-style ribs on the tracks don’t provide much, if any, lateral traction. The tracks also turn light steering into heavy steering.

Those factors aside, the improvement in flotation and traction provided by tracks compared to aired-down tires is incredible. We quickly tossed away any fear of sinking in deep snow and we drove with more of the mentality of a snowmobiler than a four-wheeler.

These Mattracks tracks added about 1,600 pounds to the Land Rover’s overall weight, placing a premium for staying in the heart of the engine’s torque curve. We ran the Defender in low-range with the manual five-speed transmission usually in Third or Fourth gear depending on the grade of the road were traveling. Momentum is your friend, much like driving in sand.

The tracks did a good job of absorbing impacts from hidden obstacles such as holes, rocks and logs hidden beneath the snow. They also did quite well rolling up and over cross-ruts and berms. Although they won’t turn your 4x4 into a Snowcat, it was easy to see that tracks dramatically increase a vehicle’s ability to traverse super-soft terrain without the added drama one gets running conventional traction tires.

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