ROAD testers are familiar with a thumbs-up, wave or smile from an oncoming driver when a rare and highly desirable car is in your hands.

It's a sign of appreciation, an understanding, a "wish I was you" affirmation.

It's happened to me a few times with certain cars, but it came as a surprise when I was bobbing along in a Land Rover Defender 90.

For something as commonplace as puddles in the Welsh landscape, the Defender seems to engender a fondness not found across such a wide spectrum of drivers.

Some were in Landies of their own, often Defenders, but others were in family hatchbacks and one was even in a sports car.

You feel like royalty but without having to go to boring events. Just keep driving your Defender and practice the royal wave instead.

The fact is that the Defender can trace its origins over 60 years and it is about to be replaced with something which is unlikely to last as long, so I wanted to try one of the last of the series, or should that be volumes?

The range was rationalised a few years go but it still stretches to over a dozen possible versions all sharing the 2.2-litre four-cylinder diesel engine. The 90 station wagon is the most popular.

The powertrain has been coaxed to give good strong pulling with a trailer or box attached and when its given its head without a necessary tow it can easily keep up with traffic. Up to a point.

It gets to 60mph from standstill in about the same time as it does to boil an egg, and the motorway maximum is close to its top speed as well but somewhere in between it shows a different character.

The big steering wheel has a slight vagueness about direction and that's deliberate to compensate for kick-back on serious off-road sections but you do learn to live with this and with familiarity the steering repays your understanding.

There is a tendency for the steering to take the long way around a corner but on the move its not really heavy.

After your workout in the gym you can take on the size-14 clutch boot - its not really a limp-pedal - and wrestle with the six-ratios hiding in the gearchange. There is little finesse about the change but its direct and uncompromising.

Thankfully the brakes work with less effort and will slow and stop the 2.5 tonnes Defender quite easily. You yank on the handbrake and it finally lurches to a halt. Nothing is going to move it now.

Secondary controls are a quaint combination of stalks and beefy switches on the fascia, which has been updated and now boasts big circular air vents instead of those familiar push open flaps beneath the windscreen.

You can select a good range of temperature and it stays constant but you have rear sliding windows, not wind-up ones.

Oddments room is very modest in the doors and fascia but there is an enormous central console box and some pockets in the back, with a waist-high loadbed and a one-cubic metre capacity and it's capable of taking 623kg in all.

You have to be reasonably agile to climb up into the Defender 90 as its chassis is deliberately set to wade through half-metre of water and once seated you have a good view of the surroundings.

Seats have been improved over the years and are now quite comfortable infront, slightly less so behind.

That becomes apparent when the on-road firmness gives way to off-road toughness and the coil spring suspension drops and lifts you over anything.

Very good approach and departure angles mean you can take on serious off-road situations which would leave more modern rivals at a standstill.

The gearbox has a more simplified high and low range arrangement to select the best gear for any job but it can sometimes take a good hefty shove to move the range lever as desired.

Once you get use to the system it really works well and you can appreciate why Land Rovers have proved so popular around the world and with all it can throw at them.