The Defender Trophy revives a legendary motoring challenge, with a Singaporean headed for the global finals

[KAOHSIUNG] Every motoring writer looks longingly at racing cars with wistful thoughts of "if only", but the Defender Trophy taught me that not only am I not much good at driving fast, I can also be pretty hopeless at walking speed, too. I found this out on the outskirts of Kaohsiung, Taiwan, at the competition's Asia-Pacific qualifying round. For a challenge called Fenced In, I had to pilot a Defender 110 into an impossibly tight space, turn it around and drive back out within 15 minutes. As someone who has been married for 12 years, I consider myself an old hand at getting out of tight spots, so I thought it would be a snap. Only it wasn't, and I flunked the test embarrassingly. If there's a life lesson here, it's to not get yourself into tight spots in the first place. No such luck at the Defender Trophy. The competition is built entirely around putting people in impossible situations and seeing what they do next. While more than 10,000 people worldwide applied to take part, Jaguar Land Rover's Asia-Pacific office picked 24 competitors from Hong Kong, Indonesia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam, deposited them in the mountainous terrain of southern Taiwan, and gave them sweaty, puzzling things to do. The prize for two? A place at the global final in Africa later this year, hosted in partnership with Tusk, Land Rover's long-standing conservation partner. The event revives the spirit of the legendary Camel Trophy, one of motoring history's great adventures. From 1980 to 2000, teams of two drove yellow Defenders into the most hostile places on Earth, such as the Amazon, Borneo, Siberia, Papua New Guinea, Tierra del Fuego, and even Alexandra Road's Ikea carpark on a Sunday. It was gruelling, muddier than one of my explanations to the wife about why I need another power tool, and magnificently bonkers, the kind of event where navigating impossible terrain with a partner under extreme duress was considered a good time. A bit like marriage, come to think of it. The Camel Trophy ended when tobacco advertising money dried up, but its spirit lives on in the Defender 110 Trophy Edition. Finished exclusively in either Deep Sandglow Yellow (an eye-catching nod to iconic Camel Trophy livery) or Keswick Green, it comes loaded with expedition intent: a roof rack, all-terrain tyres, a full-size spare, classic mudflaps, gloss black wheel arch protection and Trophy Edition decals that tell other drivers you're not afraid to run over them if you have to. That people would run a competition around the Defender's off-roading prowess seems inevitable, given how raw adventure is written into the vehicle's DNA. Land Rover actually organised an earlier version before, the G4 Challenge, from 2003 until the global financial crisis put paid to it in 2008. The most direct current equivalent I can think of is the BMW Motorrad GS Trophy, a biennial adventure motorcycle competition of genuinely fearsome intensity, in which bones have been broken and bikes have been destroyed. I know this because I was embedded with Team Southeast Asia at the 2014 edition and spent a meaningful portion of that week not entirely certain I would return home with body and soul still together. In Taiwan, the closest I came to genuine anxiety was being asked to lash two logs together to form a bridge sturdy enough for a 2.6-tonne Defender to cross a creek. Who knew, after all these years, that tying the knot well would turn out to be such a critical life skill. I made it across safely, thanks to a steady hand, intense concentration, and above all, because an instructor undid my clumsy ropework and did it over from scratch when he thought I wasn't looking. What I enjoyed most was a forest driving challenge in which the goal was to bash through a narrow trail, tiptoe over rocks and steep inclines, all the while aiming for hanging green balls with the Defender's wing mirrors while avoiding red ones. The terrain was barely passable on foot, but the Defender handled it with the casual indifference of a vehicle that regards rocky terrain the way most of us regard a speed bump. In truth, few doubt a Defender's off-roading abilities, so the Trophy feels more like a test of its participants than of the vehicle. Teamwork, mental agility, ropework and communication under pressure would win the day. The two victors were Charles Murray, an adrenaline-chasing skier and mountain biker from New Zealand, and Ron Ng, a fitness-obsessed content creator from Singapore, whose Hyrox-sculpted abdomen resembles a scaled-down version of the boulder paths I drove over. "I had no expectations coming into this competition. My main goal was to have fun, and fun did I have!" Ng says, adding that his fitness saw him through the event's physical challenges and helped him keep his composure. "And I think my positive, fun energy definitely helped lift the overall team's morale." The Trophy's revival comes at an important time for the car it's named after. Land Rover recently spun the Defender nameplate off into a standalone brand, meaning there are no longer Land Rover Defenders. Instead, the cars have become the Defender 90, 110 and 130 (the same car in three sizes), with a smaller Defender Sport in the works. Whatever name is on the bonnet, the Defender Trophy is a reminder that the vehicle will remain unstoppable off-road, and considerably better than I am at getting out of tight spots.