2024 Land Rover Defender Recall: Seat Belt May Be Improperly Stitched

An owner told NHTSA on August 4, 2025 that the second-row seat belt in a 2024 Land Rover Defender had come unstitched. Photos sent with the complaint showed webbing whose stitching, in the agency's words, appeared not to have been properly formed. More than 13 months later, on September 24, 2026, Jaguar Land Rover filed campaign 26V615 for 371 Defenders built over three days at its plant in Nitra, Slovakia.

The 371 are a build range JLR drew wide enough to take in every vehicle that could have received a belt from the production batch that contained the failed one. JLR lists the estimated share with the defect at 100% and describes the recall's purpose as confirming that no further affected parts are on customer vehicles.

The Issue

The belt is JLR part number LR190158, supplied by Autoliv. On a properly sewn belt, a thread from the top needle and a thread from the bobbin underneath lock together through the webbing.

The initial conclusion in JLR's March 2026 response to NHTSA, drawn from Autoliv's work to that point, was that the bobbin thread had not formed a lockstitch with the top-needle thread. The result looked like a stitched component and did not have full structural integrity. When the owner put the belt under significant tension, the bottom layer of material pulled away from the top and left the top-needle thread in place.

A belt with incomplete or missing stitching may detach from its anchor webbing and fail to restrain an occupant in a crash. NHTSA's opening document for its investigation called that especially concerning for children and for children in child seats.

The cause field of the Part 573 report is blank. JLR's March 6 response says Autoliv asserts that five extraordinary individual circumstances must come together at once to produce the failed belt. They are set out in an Autoliv document filed as confidential, and the response does not list them.

Affected Models

Model	Model year	Production dates	Units
Land Rover Defender	2024	Jan 31, 2024 - Feb 2, 2024	371

The seat belts are not sequenced to individual vehicles on the assembly line, so JLR widened the range of vehicles to be sure the whole batch was covered. The filing does not break the 371 down by body style.

NHTSA put the population of 2024 Defenders at 29,688 when it opened its investigation, about 80 times the 371 in the recall.

Chronology and Investigation

NHTSA opened Preliminary Evaluation PE25-019 on December 11, 2025 on the basis of the one complaint, and sent JLR an information request on January 6, 2026.

JLR's response, as updated on March 6, reported one consumer complaint and one warranty claim, both for the same vehicle, and concluded there was no evidence of a pattern or trend. JLR called the failure an isolated incident in a population of approximately 1.3 million seat belts Autoliv had supplied to JLR globally. Autoliv proposed inspecting 29 parts built on the same bobbin run.

JLR then launched what it calls a parts-harvesting campaign to locate belts from the failed belt's production batch. From March into September its Product Safety and Compliance Committee reviewed the results and noted that no further faulty belts had turned up.

On September 4, 2026, the committee learned that none of the belts inspected up to that point had come from the batch in question. A review finished on September 10 found that the pallet holding that batch had paused unexpectedly at the side of the assembly line, which put its belts into vehicles outside the range JLR had been checking.

On September 21, after discussion with NHTSA, JLR agreed to convert the parts-harvesting campaign into a safety recall to speed its completion. NHTSA's record showed PE25-019 still open on October 4, 2026.

Reported Incidents

JLR's recall report says it has received no claims or field reports directly in the United States and knows of the one owner complaint from August 2025. Its March response to NHTSA listed a warranty claim on that same vehicle. JLR reports no accidents, injuries or fires in the U.S., and its response says the failed belt was detected before any safety incident.

Remedy and Notification

Dealers will check the serial number on the second-row seat belt and replace the belt if the number places it in the batch that produced the failure. The inspection and the replacement are free. JLR's number for the recall is D130.

The replacement belts are identical to the originals and come from later manufacturing periods. JLR does not believe the issue affects current production.

Dealers are to be notified on October 8, 2026, and owner letters are due on or before November 20. JLR filed that date as an interim notification, and NHTSA's summary says more letters will follow once the final remedy is available. The fields for the remedy letter date and for when VINs become searchable on NHTSA.gov are blank. Land Rover customer service is at 800-637-6837.

Symptoms to Watch For

A belt with this fault has no electronic warning, according to JLR's response to the investigation.

Stitching that separates when the belt is pulled. The one known failure showed itself when the owner put the belt under tension. An owner of a Defender built between January 31 and February 2, 2024 can pull hard on each second-row belt and look at the sewn section near the anchor for layers of webbing coming apart.

A belt loose from its anchor. JLR's response quotes the owner's complaint as describing a belt that was "not stitched and was not connected to the frame."

How Long Will the Recall Repair Take?

JLR has published no labor time. The first step is reading a serial number, and a belt from outside the batch stays in the vehicle.

Bottom Line

JLR spent six months inspecting belts from other vehicles before it identified this build range. Until the serial numbers are checked, an owner of one of these Defenders cannot tell whether a second-row belt came from the failed belt's batch, and NHTSA's opening document singled out children and child seats as the concern. A Land Rover retailer can run the VIN against D130 after October 8.

Find your Land Rover Defender recall information: https://www.landroverusa.com/ownership/vin-recall.html

The recall traces to one owner complaint filed with NHTSA on August 4, 2025 and to the agency's Preliminary Evaluation PE25-019, opened December 11, 2025 and still open on October 4, 2026. JLR reports no accidents, injuries or fires in the U.S. A six-month parts-harvesting campaign inspected belts from the wrong vehicles before JLR found the batch had gone into a three-day build range of 371 Defenders, January 31 to February 2, 2024.

This is the third Jaguar Land Rover campaign on this site filed in September 2026, after the DC-DC converter recall 26V599 and the Range Rover Sport SV rear subframe recall 26V613, which was filed the same day and carries the same November 20 interim letter date.