Land Rover Teams Up With Stellantis for Future Defender Pickup

There’s no shortage of swanky trucks on sale right now in the United States; every manufacturer selling a full-size pickup offers a high-end trim with luxurious accoutrements. However, luxury automakers have held out on developing grandiose trucks of their own for more than a decade. Gone are the days of the Lincoln Blackwood or Mark LT and Cadillac Escalade EXT.

That could change soon, however, thanks to a partnership between Stellantis and Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) announced on May 20, 2026. An Automotive News report states that the first product of this collaboration will be a Land Rover Defender pickup truck built with Stellantis assistance.

The goal of the agreement between JLR and Stellantis is to rebuild the product offerings of both brands with what the automakers call a nonbinding Memorandum of Understanding signed by the two companies.

The Defender pickup would be offered specifically for the United States, with manufacturing likely to take place at the Warren Truck Plant outside of Detroit. Tariffs have posed a challenge to JLR throughout the second Trump administration, and this move would see the automaker circumvent tariffs while entering the nation’s $80 billion pickup truck market.

There’s heritage-based precedent for JLR to offer a Defender-based pickup, too; the prior generation included a pickup sold abroad until it was discontinued in 2016. Additionally, the move would serve to slow the advance of Ineos, which offers the Grenadier Quartermaster as a nostalgia-inducing reminder of how Land Rovers used to be.

One of the elements JLR and Stellantis will have to navigate as the partnership progresses is determining what platform will underpin the Defender pickup. The current Defender SUV uses unibody construction, but all of the Stellantis truck offerings are body-on-frame.

For now, the details remain unknown. There’s no timeline for the Defender pickup’s arrival, nor is there a set plan for manufacturing. What’s clear is that American customers are happy to pay big money for upscale trucks, so a distinctively luxury-branded pickup has a strong chance of resonating with potential buyers.

MotorTrend reached out to JLR and Stellantis for comment and will update this story when we receive a reply.