"Why can they not continue to make a cheaper simple off roader"

More money in the premium end of the market, and LR is a small producer. Most farmers I've seen use Japanese 4x4 pickups and have done for quite a few years.

I wouldn't think the profit margins were that good on the old Defender, weren't they largely hand-built?

Farmers aren't stupid (why they mostly buy reliable Japanese and Korean 4x4s, not modern day Land/Range Rovers), unlike the Chelsea tractor brigade, who appear to have more money than sense.

Eventually Land Rovers will go out of fashion (the ones supposedly design for the road) and unless they change, they'll go out of business. This is likely to be hastened by the low build quality of their cars, plus the seemingly many design flaws the current crop of JLRs have.

Xileno is right: real farmers gave up Land Rivers decades ago. They drive Japanese pickups like the Toyota Hilux, or real 4X4s like the SWB commercial version of the Toyota Land Cruiser.

The only farmers who have bought Land Rovers in recent years are very well-heeled types who can afford to live a Country Life magazine image, such as the owners of shooting estates in Scotland. Expensive tweed clothes, 2.4 labradogs, some dead stags ... and a carefully-muddied Land Rover Defender to complete the image

Users in developing nations also buy Japanese. Whether it's the UN with its Land Cruisers or the Taliban with its Hiluxes, people whose lives depend on their vehicles don't buy Land Rovers.

So the new pseudo-Defender is targeted at a different set of customers. LJR will still want to sell a few pseudo-Defenders to the huntin'-shootin'-fishin' brigade, but mostly as photo material for sales elsewhere. Expect the JLR dealers in Speyside and the Cairngorms to be incentivised to shift a steady flow of very-discreetly-subsidised stock to the "right" customers (i.e. those with thousands of photogenically-rugged acres). Maybe there will be a few similarly-selected deals in the Cotswolds and Exmoor.

So I assume that the real target for the pseudo-Defender isn't even the English suburbs, though sales there will be handy and will vastly exceed sales to the British countryside. This vehicle is primed for export, to anglophiles in North America, and above all to China.

I reckon that China is where JLR expects to find the sales volume. Audi/Merc/BMW is now commonplace out there, so JLR may have a niche with the "real 4X4" shtick (however they phrase it).

It remains to be seen how much love the Chinese can sustain for a vehicle which will probably require them to put the Land Rover service centre on speed dial. But Tata has deep enough pockets to take a punt ... and if the high-end export lark doesn't work out, they can close the expensive UK operations and repurpose the JLR brands for badge-engineering their Asian market vehicles, like Ford did with the once-proud Ghia name.