Rugged: Land Rover Defender is also equipped with an array of advanced off-road hardware and software systems.

Late last month, the Mail & Guardian celebrated Freedom Day with a special Freedom Day edition. Unfortunately, I was not part of that edition because I took some leave to welcome my daughter to the world. Nevertheless, our editor-in-chief Japhet Ncube asked the newsroom to pour into the paper what freedom meant to them.

When I got back to the newsroom, I read the incredible edition and felt like the opportunity passed me by to express what Freedom meant to me but I was also driving the Land Rover Defender 110 X-Dynamic HSE that week and realised that maybe I can still capitalise on the theme of freedom but from a motoring perspective.

You might wonder how but the Defender is always a car I’ve classified as freedom on wheels. That’s because it is a car that is built to do what you want, when you want to.

The variant I had came with a 3 litre twin-turbo inline six cylinder diesel engine that produces 257kW of power and 700Nm or torque.