Land Rover Yearbook 2022

The essential annual for Land Rover owners and enthusiasts

Land Rover

2 022

YEARBOOK 12 £7.99

the year’s pages of cts for u best prod over R d n your La

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COOL CLASSIC

Who needs bling when you can stand out by matching your Land Rover to the buildings in your village?

The best Disco yet?

Glorious new D300 tested

PERFECT PINKIE

Is this the finest model Land Rover there’s ever been?

ON TEST

✔ Enhanced ✔ Restored ✔ Preserved ✔ Modified

One great Land Rover after another inside

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HANDY ANDES

High times amid the peaks of South America 07/11/2021 21:28

three of three generations generations of Defender Accessories & Upgrades automotive automotive passion passion

Sound Deadening & Insulation

Full Body Resprays

LED LIGHT UPGRADES

LED Headlights

Full Vehicle LED Light Kits

Driving & Work Lights

Headlinings for 90, 110 & Crew Cab

Aluminium Styling Upgrades

IT OUR EE E TO S T T I S B WE ODUC R P L FUL AND S E G N RA G PRICIN

IS INTERIOR VTRIMS

Replacement Seat Covers EXPEDITION ACCESSORIES

LICHFIELD LICHFIELD

Lockable Sporting / Storage Box

Roof Racks for 90, 110 & Crew Cab

Bumpers & Steering Guards

WINDOWS

Land Rover Land RoverSpare Wheel Carriers Side Steps Defender Accessories Defender Accessories Tree Sliders Wheels Snorkels

Chequer Plates //masai4x4 masai4x4

Folios Classifieds 2020.indd 53

Folios Classifieds 2020.indd 53 Folios Classifieds 2020.indd 53 Masai.indd 1

Always Always original original quality quality

Lamp Guards

Light Mounting Bars

Bonnets & Scoops

NAS Rear Steps

Rear Ladderswww.masai4x4.com Heated Windscreens www.masai4x4.com 03/11/2020 18:16:17

03/11/2020 18:18:03 03/11/2020 18:18:03

06/05/2021 20:44

DEFENDER RESTORATIONS

Sound Deadening & Insulation

Defender Accessories & Upgrades

Full Vehicle LED Light Kits

Driving & Work Lights

Headlinings for 90, 110 & Crew Cab

Aluminium Styling Upgrades

Full Body Resprays

LED LIGHT UPGRADES

LED Headlights

INTERIOR TRIMS

Replacement Seat Covers EXPEDITION ACCESSORIES

Lockable Sporting / Storage Box

Roof Racks for 90, 110 & Crew Cab

Bumpers & Steering Guards

WINDOWS

Side Steps

Spare Wheel Carriers

Lamp Guards

Light Mounting Bars

Wheels

Tree Sliders

Bonnets & Scoops

NAS Rear Steps

Snorkels

Chequer Plates

Rear Ladders

Heated Windscreens

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03/11/2020 18:16:17

Contents

Features

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ALL- NEW RANGE ROVER

Unveiled and here very soon, Land Rover’s new flagship promises to be everything a Range Rover should be – with more luxury than ever to top it off

DEFENDER HARD -TOP

Are the 90 and 110 at their best as commercial vehicles? We found out by carrying several tons of potatoes

PLUG - IN VELAR

Almost all Land Rovers are now powered by hybrid engines. But if you really want to keep the tax man off your case, it’s the plug-in models that matter – and the Velar is a natural fit for the latest green tech

REVISED DISCOVERY

This year’s mid-life updates did more than just keep the Discovery fresh – they lifted it to whole new heights

PINKIE IN MINIATURE

The Series IIA Pink Panther desert patrol vehicle was a military masterpiece and has become a treasure among classic Landies.

But when you see this stunningly faithful driveable replica, you’re sure to agree that it’s a masterpiece in its own right too

PRODUCTS

Whether you’re getting your Land Rover ready to hit the trails or see the world, restoring it to peak perfection or just keeping it ticking over from day to day, here’s a selection of the latest kit you’ll need

118 BUYERS GUIDE

On the lookout for your next Land Rover?

Having checked out our comprehensive guide to everything the company has ever made, the only problem might be trying to figure out which one you want to buy first

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Vehicles Vehicles

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From the team that brings you…

46 MODERNISED RANGEY

Take one roughly done Classic and redo it properly, bringing it into the modern world along the way. The result? A glorious Range Rover that’s future-proofed and forever

54 TOP-DOLLAR 110

Arkonik does its thing to a V8 station wagon to create a Defender that’s part luxury car, part show car, part workhorse and all cool

58 ARCHITECTURAL 90

Our front cover star car is an original 90 TD which demonstrates how little it takes to turn a Defender into the most eye-catching vehicle in town

64 DISCO 2 CAMPER Much more than just an expedition build, this TD5 was completely remanufactured as

01283 553243 alan.kidd@assignment-media.co.uk Web: www.thelandy.co.uk Facebook: www.facebook.com/thelandyuk

Workshop 94

Founding Editor Alan Kidd

DEFENDER CROSSMEMBER

It comes to us all… When your 90 or 110 drops its back end, here’s what goes into replacing rust with good metal

104 DISCO 2 BACK BUMPER

The D2 is now an A1 choice for off-road use, which means fitting a steel bumper to hold your winch. Might as well do one at the rear too – it’s an easy job

a go-anywhere motorhome

68 OFF-ROAD DISCO 1

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With Defender values climbing ever higher, does the Mk1 Discovery offer an alternative for off-roading? It might, it you can still find one worth having…

78 SERIES III COUNTY

Defenders and bling go hand in hand these days. The early Series III County is where it all began – and they don’t come much earlier than this one…

Adventure 106 ETHIOPIA

If your perception of Ethiopia has been blighted by stories on the news of war and famine, think again. It’s a beautiful nation with a rich history and culture. But not a lot of diesel…

112 THE ANDES

South America ought to be on more travellers’ go-there lists. It’s a shipping container job, but it’s a continent whose landscapes alone are worth the effort

88 IIA TO THE RESCUE…

The strange story of how a 109” military ambulance became a mountain rescue vehicle courtesy of a man who decided to co-opt it into the RAF

92 COLLECTABLE P38

Collectors spend fortunes on early Range Rovers, but the second-generation model has some very worthwhile special editions in its history too. None more so than the celebrated Holland and Holland luxury shooting brake

Photographers Steve Taylor, Harry Hamm, Richard Hair, Vic Peel, Michelle Thruxton Group Advertising Manager Ian Argent Tel: 01283 553242 Advertising Manager Colin Ashworth Tel: 01283 553244

Subscriptions Sarah Moss Tel: 01283 553242

82 PATINATED SERIES I

Few things are more beautiful than a restored Series I. Apart possibly from a Series I that’s never needed restoring and still wears its battle scars with pride

Contributors Mike Trott, Paul Looe, Dan Fenn, Olly Sack, Gary Noskill, Adrian Willis, Tom Alderney, Frank Frogly, Jenny Bright and Gavin Lowrie, Raymond and Nereide Greaves

Advertising Production Sarah Moss Tel: 01283 553242

72 EVERYDAY LIGHTWEIGHT Remember the days when people used to modify old Lightweights and use them as off-road toys? The very good news is that those days are still here…

Art Editor Samantha D’Souza

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Publisher and Head of Marketing Sarah Moss Email: sarah.moss@assignment-media.co.uk To subscribe to The Landy, or renew your subscription, call 01283 553243 Current price for 12 issues: UK £28 The Landy is available from newsagents, priced at £2.99 a copy, and free through selected Britpart dealers Every effort is made to ensure the contents of The Land Rover Yearbook are accurate, however Assignment Media Ltd accepts no responsibility for errors or omissions nor the consequences of actions made as a result of these When responding to any advert in The Land Rover Yearbook, you should make appropriate enquiries before sending money or entering into a contract. The publishers take reasonable steps to ensure advertisers’ probity, but will not be liable for loss or damage incurred as a result of responding to adverts Where a photo credit includes the note ‘CC-BY-2.0’ or similar, the image is made available under that Creative Commons licence: details at www.creativecommons.org The Land Rover Yearbook is published by Assignment Media Ltd, Repton House 1.08, Bretby Business Park, Ashby Road, Bretby DE15 0YZ

© Assignment Media Ltd, 2021

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LAND ROVER TAKES THE COVERS Fifth-generation version of Solihull’s flagship luxury 4x4 looks familiar at first glance but Words: Olly Sack Pictures: Land Rover

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and Rover has lifted the wraps on the new Range Rover – with the promise that the fifth generation of its flagship vehicle will remain true to its roots. Despite being, in Land Rover’s words, ‘defined by presence and formality, achieved by the harmony of proportions, surface and lines’, the vehicle promises ‘the all-conquering off-road capability and command driving position that have been Range Rover hallmarks for more than half a century.’

As with the current model, the Rangey will follow the pattern introduced towards the end of the Classic era by being available with a choice of two wheelbases. The standard model will be based on a 118” layout, while for customers wanting extra space in the rear compartment this

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is stretched to 126” for the LWB model. A fiveseat layout is standard throughout, however the LWB can also be optioned with a third row turning into a seven-seater.

Based on Land Rover’s MLA-Flex platform, the Range Rover retains the all-independent suspension that’s now common to all the company’s vehicles, with unequal-length double wishbones at the front and five-link geometry at the rear. It will enter production with a choice of petrol, diesel and plug-in hybrid powertrains then, two years in, will also become available as a full EV. The petrol engines start with a 3.0-litre straight six mild-hybrid unit available with a choice of 360bhp and 400bhp outputs. These are backed up by torque figures of 369lbf.ft and 406lbf.ft

respectively. Then, at the top of the range, is a new 4.4-litre twin-turbo V8 whose 530bhp and 553lbf.ft propel the vehicle’s 2585kg mass from 0-62mph in just 4.6 seconds.

On the diesel side, a 3.0-litre straight six mild-hybrid will be tuned for a choice of three outputs. Even at the base of the pyramid, the entry-level 249bhp unit comes with a towering 443lbf.ft of torque; moving up, you can also choose 300bhp with 479lbf.ft or, at the top of the diesel line-up, 350bhp with 516lbf.ft.

Quoted fuel economy figures for all three diesel engines climb to 37.2mpg on the combined cycle. Even the V8 achieves 24.8mpg on the same test; hardly frugal by today’s standards, but a far cry from the eye-watering consumption of

Land Rover Yearbook 07/11/2021 21:27

OFF THE NEW RANGE ROVER promises to be the most revolutionary Range Rover since the original

the old Rover V8 in the days of the Mk2 Rangey.

These figures are quoted for standard-wheelbase models, however the heavier LWB is only fractionally less fuel-efficient.

For the greatest economy, however (and, of course, to avoid the most astronomical tax bills), there will also be a choice of two plug-in hybrid models. These mate the 3.0-litre petrol engines to a 105kW electric motor to offer a choice of 440 or 510bhp outputs. Land Rover says they can be driven at up to 87mph on electric power alone, and that they will combine a real-world range of around 50 miles with the ability to be charged to 80% capacity in less than an hour, allowing zero-emissions use to be a realistic prospect in the vast majority of everyday driving scenarios.

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Plug-in models will only offer a towing capacity of up to 2500kg, whereas the rest of the launch range will be able to haul 3500kg. Every Range Rover will be a highly capable off-roader, however, with more electronic driver aids than ever before on top of the MLA-Flex platform’s ‘outstanding off-road suspension geometry.’

Among the innovations making their debut in the new vehicle are Dynamic Response Pro, which using 48-volt electronics to neutralise body roll. Operating continually, this can deliver up to 1033lbf.ft to the active anti-roll bars – with as much as 664lbf.ft available within 200 milliseconds. When the vehicle is being used off-road, the bars decouple to free up greater articulation and the system’s actuators work to enhance traction by helping the wheels follow the ground.

The Range Rover also features Land Rover’s latest Terrain Response 2 system, with an Auto mode priming the vehicle to suit the conditions without any driver input. Height adjustable air suspension is standard, as are intelligent all-wheel drive and an active rear diff using Torque Vectoring by Braking to stabilise the vehicle in corners and enhance its traction off-road. Also standard on all models is four-wheel steering, which aids stability when changing lanes on the motorway and manoeuvrability at lower speeds.

Land Rover quotes a ground clearance of 295mm for all versions of the Range Rover (oddly, this drops to 294mm at the rear only on the LWB model). Approach, departure and breakover

angles are 34.7, 29 and 27.7 degrees respectively (the latter drops to 25.2 degrees on the LWB) and wading depth is 900mm across the board.

At first glance, the new Range Rover looks similar to the current model. However when seen together, its design is more minimal, with smoother profiles and larger, heavier flanks creating an impression of heft (or bulk, if you prefer). It does however retain features which link it back to the original, including the iconic clamshell bonnet – whose shut lines, once the butt of r a thousand automotive music hall jokes, are now just half the width of the previous model’s.

In addition, gloss black pillars create the impression of a floating roof whose strong horizontal emphasis is matched by a strong, uninterrupted waistline. In the words of JLR Design Director Massimo Frascella, ‘everything is so pure and free from any superfluous ornament.’

The same philosophy is seen in the cabin – in which, according to Interior Design Director Alan Sheppard, ‘the emphasis has been on delivering a serene, simple and calming interior.’ The Range Rover will be available in five and seven-seat form – and also as a four-seater, with the second row replaced by a pair of Executive Rear Seats.

This latter option can be expected to be taken up primarily by customers who employ chauffeurs.

Up front, the familiar high-command driving position is retained. Throughout the vehicle, the surfaces and materials ‘create a calm sanctuary for all occupants, turning every trip into an experi-

At first glance, the new Range Rover looks very similar to the current L405 model. Seeing them together, however, the differences are clear. The Mk5 version has notably cleaner, less cluttered lines, with a floating roof very much part of the design. There’s a greater impression of heft, particularly around its rear haunches, and the shut line beneath the clamshell bonnet runs the whole length of the vehicle to become a styling element in its own right

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SVO editions set to join Range Rover line-up during 2022

Serenity (above) and Intrepid (below) design themes add individual character to the Range Rover SV’s interior. The SV Signature Suite option (bottom) sets out the rear cabin around a full length console featuring a deployable Club Table

THE NEW RANGE ROVER will be available from launch in SV form, with its own styling identity and a choice of Serenity and Intrepid design themes. All models built by Land Rover’s Special Vehicle Operations unit will feature a body-coloured roof and silver-coloured exterior detailing; Serenity models add further touches in the cabin to highlight the vehicle’s status as a luxury car, while the Intrepid finish ‘reflects a more purposeful and dynamic character.’

Inside, all SV models are equipped with Land Rover’s Executive Class Comfort Plus seating. In addition, however, customers can upgrade this to the spectacular new SV Signature Suite option – whose four-seat configuration is centred around a full-length floor console featuring a deployable Club Table whose operation is described by Land Rover as ‘choreographed’ and ‘an exquisite piece of technical engineering.’

With the arrival of the new Range Rover, SVO itself is also getting a slight rework in terms of its products’ identity. Previously, its vehicles have been identified as SVR or SVAutobiography depending on whether their focus is on performance or luxury; now, all will be brought under a single SV brand and identified by a ceramic roundel badge made using techniques from the production of luxury watch faces.

The Range Rover SV will be available with the top petrol, diesel and plug-in hybrid engines from the standard line-up. It will go on sale during 2022; prices, which are yet to be announced, can confidently be expected to start north of £150,000.

Like all modern Land Rovers, the Range Rover uses independent suspension all-round with unequal-length wishbones at the front and a five-link set-up at the back. Air suspension is standard equipment, offering height-adjustability and priming the vehicle for corners using horizon data. Articulation is good by the standards of an all-independent system, albeit nowhere near the level for which Range Rovers used to be famed, however the vehicle’s off-road technology includes centre and rear diffs which lock automatically, the latter via the brakes in response to torque vectoring inputs

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Land Rover Yearbook 07/11/2021 21:27

The Range Rover is based on Land Rover’s MLA-Flex architecture, giving it the ability to accommodate every kind of powertrain currently in use. The launch range will be composed mainly of mild hybrids, though a traditional V8 petrol engine is also listed, but the platform is primed for electrification – you can see the positioning of the batteries here. Two plug-in hybrids will be available from the word go, and in 2024 these will be joined by a fully electric model

ence to savour.’ Especially if you savour big touchscreens, because Land Rover’s Pivi Pro system appears on a 13.1” curved, floating display at the centre of the dash.

Offering high-definition graphics and haptic feedback, this is complemented by a 13.7” Interactive Driver Display to provide a tech-rich environment for the driver and front passenger alike. Those in the back aren’t left out, either, with an 8.0” touch-screen controller available as an option when ordering Executive Rear Seats – and and entertainment system combining 11.4” HD screens with media inputs and smart TV via an onboard wifi hotspot.

Naturally, there’s a wide range of colour and material options available for the cabin – including various high-tech fabrics made using recycled plastic. These add to the Range Rover’s environmental credentials while opening up new options for customers who, for example, want to avoid traditional leather.

Every bit as naturally, none of this is going to come cheap. The new Range Rover will start at £94,400, with the top model costing £137,800 plus options – and that’s before prices go live for the SV range. As it is, we went on to Land Rover’s

Land Rover Yearbook 4pp Range Rover.indd 7

configurator for the new model and within the space of three and a half minutes we had managed to spec one up to more than £170,000.

When Autocar tested the original Range Rover in 1970, they quoted its list price as £1528. That’s just over £24,000 in today’s money. So there’s one way in which the new model doesn’t stay true to its roots – though it certainly is following the pattern the vehicle has set in its more recent past.

The truth is that the Range Rover has become a very different vehicle during those 51 years. Land Rover has, however, gone to enormous lengths to ensure that it remains authentic and continues to lead with a level of capability that brooks no argu-

ment. It may have outgrown the original pot – but five generations on, the Range Rover is still grown from the same seed. The order book is open now, with first deliveries due in the spring.

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DRIVEN

LAND ROVER DEFENDER HT

New Defender offers something different in commercial form – including rugged spec levels, no-nonsense load carrying and, for many people, affordability FIRST DRIVE Land Rover 90/110 Hard-Top

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and Rover’s transformation into a premium car maker has been very well documented. It’s come with a certain amount of wailing and gnashing of teeth in some quarters, but the numbers don’t lie and truth

is, being a premium car maker has turned out to be something Land Rover is rather good at.

But Land Rover is also a company with tremendous heritage – a heritage which it trades on heavily, of course, and why wouldn’t you when it’s such an enormous part of your brand? However, that heritage comes from building simple, basic, fit-for-purpose work trucks. The premium cars didn’t come until a lot more recently, and even then it’s only in about the last third of Land

Rover’s history that they started to become really premium.

Hardcore Landy fans often grumble that the company has abandoned its traditional customers. Maybe it has – or maybe its traditional customers have changed. Or maybe neither.

Because when Land Rover offers its vehicles in commercial form, those customers are still there.

Around one in four Discoverys are vans. Yes, the Discovery, that vehicle which Landy diehards write off (wrongly) as being just another Range Rover. Bearing this in mind, it’s hardly a surprise that with the new Defender, that proportion is shaping up to be higher still.

The old Defender was available in commercial form as a van, a pickup, a double-cab and a double-cab van (the famous Utility Wagon).

This time, it’s just a van. A missed opportunity, you might say, given the popularity of the other versions back then, but Land Rover says it has no plans to do anything like that with the new one. We’ll see.

For now, here it is. The Defender Hard-Top, as it’s called (all Defenders have hard tops now, but this is the historical name for the van version so why the devil not), in both 90 and 110 form.

Land Rover’s website says it starts at £36,896.67 plus the VAT, and also at £44,210 on the road.

Whereas the rear door on the old Defender was somewhat narrow, this time it uses all the available width and height to allow for easy loading and unloding. The cargo area has a full-width flat floor, too, and the rear lip is nice and low

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Land Rover Yearbook 07/11/2021 21:11

The Defender’s cabin looks simple, but a lot of clever design has gone in to that – it’s rugged and strong on practicality, but loaded with high-tech equipment and premium materials. The optional jump seat (below) is a far cry from the basic effort in the old model – it’s a proper seat now, and it folds down when not in use to create a multi-function armrest complete with cup holders and USB sockets Those numbers don’t quite add up to us, but they give you an idea of what it takes to put a Defender on your driveway. They only tell part of the story, though, because the vehicle is showing good residual forecasts – which means its leasing and finance costs are looking quite affordable.

This could be one reason why the company says it’s seeing customers coming back to it from the doublecabs to which they decamped en masse towards the end of the old Defender’s rather lardy demise. The pick-up market is going through a fairly seismic time at present, after decades of seemingly unlimited

Land Rover Yearbook 4pp Defender HT.indd 9

growth; the Mercedes X-Class flopped, the Volkswagen Amarok won’t be back for a couple of years and the Mitsubishi L200 and Nissan Navara are putting down roots in the departure lounge.

That accounts for a considerable number of the premium pick-up options people were taking for granted until very recently. Which is where the 90 and 110 come in. They’re not double-cabs, but they’re definitely premium. And if what you’re after is a cool truck the taxman can’t touch (and, of course, you don’t need a second row of seats), just open the door and the Defender will waltz right in.

Even with a starting price that’s more than 50% above the typical 4x4 pick-up, Land Rover says the Hard-Top is attracting strong business from utility companies and so on. Fleet operators have certainly started to understand that a comfortable driver is a safer and more productive one, so cost is no longer the be-all and end-all it once was – but it’s still a fact that the most lucrative part of the market for vehicles like these is the top end, where small businesses and sole traders without the buying power of a big fleet are paying much closer to list price for high-spec vehicles with big mark-ups.

As we all know, those high-spec trucks are loaded with fancy kit. Big alloys, leather, fancy infotainment, lots of chrome, you know the drill.

Some do it better than others but they all do it.

Here’s what the absolute bogstandard, entry-level model in the entire Defender range gives you: cruise control, LED headlamps, heated windscreen, fabric (as opposed to vinyl) seats, dual-zone climate control, electric power-fold mirrors, 10” touchscreen, sat-nav, DAB, Apple CarPlay, 3D surround camera, 360-degree parking aid…

It also has the small matter of low range, which the main premium

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DRIVEN pick-up (the Amarok) didn’t, in addition to full-time four-wheel drive and Land Rover’s well known Terrain Response system, and it comes with a wide range of safety kit and a five-star EuroNCAP score to back it up.

And that’s the boggo one. It’s notable for its 18” white steel wheels, of course, which in our view look absolutely brilliant and totally in keeping, and it’s just a twoseater – though for an extra £815 you can specify a third which, very much unlike in the old Defender, is a proper seat. It folds down into a multi-function armrest when not in use, too – it’s a very cleverly thought-out bit of kit.

The 90 Hard-Top is only available in this entry-level form. With the 110, you can also get S, SE and HSE equipment packs which load it up with things like leather, alloys, keyless entry, power seats, lumbar adjust, auto main-beam, matrix headlamps and a ClearSight rear mirror (which displays the image from a camera in the tailgate). Many of these things are also available on the options list, if the model you’re going for doesn’t already have them, though there are notable omissions.

It doesn’t appear possible to add lumbar adjust on the 90, for example – which is a shame because its seats are otherwise excellent, with a really stout fabric trim, supportive base and bodyhugging side bolsters.

If you don’t go for the third front seat, a cubby box is also available on the options list. Either way, oddment stowage as standard is very good with a decent glovebox, deep, wide door pockets and a full-width tray within the dashboard whose rubberised surface makes it ideal for odds and ends. This is the case with the 90 and 110 alike, whose cabins are to all intents are purposes identical.

A huge difference between these vehicles and the old Defender is that the driver’s seat is very spacious, with plenty of leg and elbow room as well as so much headroom you could give the Pope a lift home and he wouldn’t have to take his hat off. The full-height bulkhead separating the cab from the load area behind it is far enough back to let the seats slide

fore and aft through a full range of adjustment, and they recline just as effectively too.

Behind that bulkhead is a load area with a flat floor measuring 1030mm long, 1326mm wide and 947mm high in the 90 and 1472mm long, 1423mm wide and 937mm high in the 110. There are lockable underfloor stowage compartments, one in the 90 and two in the 110, adding to a total cargo capacity of 1355 litres and 2059 litres respectively.

The side-hinged tailgate opens to reveal a gaping aperture, too – overall, it’s so much better than the old Defender, the difference is almost comical. Payload capacities are 670kg for the 90 and 778-800kg for the 110, depending on engine and specification, while all models

are capable of towing the allimportant 3500kg.

Talking of engines, the 90 comes with Land Rover’s D200 unit, a straight-six diesel developing 200bhp and 369lbf.ft. The 110 offers a choice of D250 and D300 units, again six-pot diesels but this time offering 249bhp and 420lbf. ft or 300bhp and 479lbf.ft. In each case, they’re mated to an eightspeed auto box, which definitely comes as a bit of a culture shock if you’re used to wrestling with an old LT77, but you get used to it pretty quickly and, like all Defenders, it’s an easy drive.

We experienced a 110 D250 on the launch, as well as a 90. There’s more than enough in either engine; people were saying you might want one of the bigger engines for heavy

Both models have hidden stowage under their rear floors. The 110, meanwhile, also has a large front compartment accessed either through a lift-out top panel or via the side doors seen here

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Land Rover Yearbook 07/11/2021 21:11

Off-roading Protecting Carrying Towing Enhancing Repairing Diagnosing Improving Winching Lighting Servicing

For over 35 years, servicing and repairing Land Rovers has been made easy with Britpart.

As the leading independent wholesaler, we’ve a wide range of accessories, service and repair parts for the entire Land Rover marque.

Upgrading Restoring

We can supply body components right down to replacement nuts and bolts and everything else in between and with our range of accessories you can make your Land Rover as unique as you.

To find your nearest stockist - www.britpart.com/distributors

Series / Defender / Discovery / Freelander / Range Rover / Range Rover Sport / Range Rover Evoque

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Only the entry-level Defender Hard-Top models get steel wheels.

They’re also the only models with fabric trim on their seats, and both these facts are very good reasons not to go any further up the range. Add in the coil springs you get on these base models and it’s a done deal towing, but that kind of sounds like falling for it a bit when you consider what farmers have been hauling around for decades behind old-school Defenders with power outputs that barely make it into three figures.

Anyway, we drove the 90 HardTop unladen and it has no shortage of get up and go. Most of all, however, we discovered something wonderful about it.

This was the first new-shape Defender we’ve driven (and there have been a few) with coil springs rather than air. And you know what? It handled like a Defender.

A proper one, with all the playful body roll and gung-ho handling of a stubby short-wheelbase off-roader romping its way through corners.

It was involving, engaging, even liberated; robust but real, inviting you to chuck it around and ride the waves in a way no Land Rover has since the days before the old Defender was saddled with anti-roll

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bars. It was, by some distance, the most fun we’ve had in a newgeneration Defender.

We previously drove a 90 in much higher-spec, passenger-carrying form, and were underwhelmed.

Not by the way it drove, which was fine, but but the rear seats and the incredibly tedious process involved in gaining access to them via the front. We said at the time that we felt it would be better suited as a Hard-Top, and on this experience we were right.

There’s less of a dividing line with the 110. It’s well suited to life as a station wagon and drives similarly in Hard-Top form. Obviously, depending on what you need it for it may offer a higher level of practicality than the 90. Money, choice, etc (there are lots of choices and mainly lots of money).

But for us, it’s the 90 Hard-Top that’s the breakout story here. The Defender is a very good vehicle in general but with a short wheelbase,

steel springs and no seats in the back, this most stripped-back model is the most old-school 4x4 Land Rover has made in a generation.

The 110 is an outstanding family wagon and in commercial form, it’s an outstanding work truck. However the 90 Hard-Top is, absolutely, the Defender that will appeal most to

enthusiasts. And that’s not just because it’s the only one they might be able to afford. It’s a very happy coincidence that among a range whose prices now vault into six-figure territory, the variant with the greatest character and, to us, the most appeal is the cheapest of the lot.

13 07/11/2021 21:12

DRIVEN

RANGE ROVER VELAR S P400E Land Rover’s range-wide roll-out of plug-in hybrid technology continues apace, as its most elegant SUV becomes the latest model to add plug-in power to its existing list of abilities

THE ROLL-OUT of Land Rover’s plug-in hybrid technology continues apace, with the Range Rover Velar becoming the latest model to gain a PHEV option. It uses the P400e powertrain, which combines a 2.0-litre petrol engine with a 17.1kWh battery and 48-volt motor to develop a combined 404bhp and 472lbf.ft.

We tested the vehicle in S form.

Listing from £51,465, this is the second up in a run of four trim

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levels, and it includes plenty for your money – including Terrain Optimisation 2, Wade Sensing and All Terrain Progress Control, but not low range. It does have four-wheel drive, though, you’ll be relieved to hear.

Something else the test vehicles on Land Rover’s launch event also had was a bizarre two-tone interior featuring black and dark blue leather that might appeal to some taste’s but certainly didn’t do anything for

ours. The phrase ‘ruins a nice car’ appeared in our notes. Premium suedecloth fabric is available on this model for about a grand more, and we wouldn’t think twice, but each to their own – and there are also several very nice other leather options available that don’t require you to spend any more money (and won’t play havoc with your Velar’s trade-in value), so no harm done.

With that early digression out of the way, let’s concentrate on what the P400e is like to drive. The short answer is that it’s very impressive.

To go into a little more depth, it picks up speed without any hesitation, even if you’re already bowling along at pace. This happens whatever mode you’re in, too. The system has EV, Hybrid and Save settings, allowing you to prioritise electric or petrol power of combine both; what we found was that in terms of performance, it doesn’t really matter which you’re in – it will always be extremely responsive on the throttle,

leaping to attention the instant the pedal goes down.

Obviously, it runs about town in EV mode with that eerie silence you expect from an electric vehicle. The engine is very quiet too, though – in fact we found that there’s little difference in the drivetrain’s refinement wherever the power’s coming from.

The 2.0-litre unit sings out when you give it the boot, but it’s not a nasty noise – and once again it’s very well muted when you settle to a cruise. This does, however, serve to highlight that there’s rather a lot of road noise at speed, and a good bit of wind noise too.

There’s a lot of road noise around town, too, which is just as evident whether or not you’re running solely on electric power. And we felt a constant fussing from the suspension on roads we’d have expected it to deal with better. This particular Velar runs on coil springs rather than air, though our instinct was to look more to the dampers or possibly the

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The Velar’s cabin has always been a slick, calm and pleasing place to be, and that’s as true as ever today. The black and blue colour scheme on our test vehicle definitely won’t be to everyone’s taste (it’s far less subtle than these pictures suggest), but there are plenty of other options available and done right, it’s beautiful 265/45R21 tyres for an explanation.

Either way, we’ve come to expect a much more refined ride from any Land Rover, let alone one with a Range Rover badge on its bonnet.

The coil springs certainly don’t detract from what the Velar can do offroad. Nor does the hybrid drivetrain, though the feeling of overing rough ground in near-complete silence is one you can enjoy whether it’s running in full-EV mode or on petrol power. Obviously, however, the electric motor delivers torque in a way no internal combustion engine ever can, so it feels utterly effortless at low speeds – even when you’re scaling sharp crests or longer, steep hills, the vehicle’s ability to fight gravity without needing to raise its voice never fails to come as a surprise.

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We did notice, however, that when we backed off over the crest at the top of a climb, be it a proper hill or just the sort of raised tree root that asks for an instinctive squeeze of the throttle, the vehicle seemed to surge forward for a moment before the hill descent control kicked in to bring it back. Perhaps this is something you’d get used to, given the chance, and our assumption is that it’s down to a lack of drivetrain inertia and/or engine compression to slow it down the way a lifetime of petrol and in particular diesel-engined 4x4s has trained us to expect, but it certainly kept building momentum for longer than we expected in way that was alarming at times.

The number of people who decide against a Velar P400e based on this should certainly be zero, because

even if it’s a quirk of the vehicle rather than us just not having had enough time to get used to it, the chances of it being relevant in any sort of meaningful way should be… well, zero again. Far better to concentrate on another zero, which is the amount of emissions coming out of the tailpipe when you’re driving to work, school or the shops on nothing but electric power. Use it correctly, and this has the potential to be a tremendously economical premium SUV – and one which sets itself apart from the crowd by dishing up some genuine off-road

ability to go with its wide-ranging off-road skills.

Most of all, that £51,465 price tag actually looks like pretty strong value for what is a totally convincing premium SUV whose style and panache are backed up by seriously good all-round abilities and, in this form, tiny running costs. We weren’t impressed by the ride quality of the vehicle we drove, and its interior proved beyond doubt that taste is a personal thing – but overall, while it’s hardly cheap, you can see the Velar P400e making sense in all sorts of ways.

15 07/11/2021 22:22

DRIVEN

LAND ROVER DISCOVERY New six-cylinder petrol and diesel engines lead a long list of improvements as Land Rover’s family favourite gets a major mid-life update

TOWARDS THE END OF LAST YEAR, Land Rover gave the Discovery what will be the most significant relaunch of its model life. The word ‘facelift’ is often used in these situations, but that doesn’t seem quite right here – because while the vehicle’s styling details have indeed been revised, the big stories are to be found beneath the surface.

The biggest of the lot lurks beneath the Discovery’s bonnet. Here, there’s a whole range of new engine options, all of them six-cylinder 48volt mild hybrids.

These join the existing P300 fourpot to offer a choice of two petrol and two diesel engines. The P360 now tops the gas range, while both oil-burners are new; the D250 is the

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entry-level unit here, while the D300 is too all intents and purposes as fast as its petrol counterpart.

We drove the P360 and D300 on the launch event, which included a good range of roads as well as a lengthy section of off-road work in the woods of the Eastnor estate.

If you’re old enough to remember the days of the 200Tdi and 3.9 V8, you’ll know that back then, the two different versions of the Discovery were like chalk and cheese – by contrast, one of the big things we took away from a day behind the wheel of the range-topping petrol and diesel models today is how extraordinarily similar they are.

The new P360 and D300 engines displace 2995cc and 2996cc

respectively. Aided by both a twinscroll turbocharger and a 48-volt electric supercharger, the former produces 360bhp and 369lbf.ft, the latter from an impressively low 1750rpm. The D300, meanwhile, delivers 300bhp, backed up by 479lbf.ft – this time from an even more flexible 1500rpm.

The result is outstanding performance – done two different ways but, when it comes down to it, so good in each case that it’s more or less a dead heat. The figures say 0-62mph in 6.5 seconds for the P360 and 6.8 seconds for the D300, and top speed is 130mph in each case, but we’re struggling to think of any real-world driving scenario in which you’d notice a difference.

Certainly, neither will feel slow.

Ever. The Discovery is a heavy beast, but it pulls away effortlessly and gathers pace with a near-ethereal smoothness. Refinement is a big part of the story for its new engines, and both are remarkable in this way – noise, vibration and harshness are almost completely absent in each case. As you might expect, the petrol engine is the quieter of the two, but the difference is tiny – we’re talking about tenths of a percent.

If there’s one really noticeable difference between the two engines, it’s in what happens when you’re on the motorway and you kick it down for a brisk lane change. The D300 gathers pace promptly, for sure – but the P360 responds with a snarl

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Much is new in the Discovery’s interior. Land Rover’s latest Pivi Pro infotainment system gets the lion’s share of the attention here – and deservedly so, because it’s a huge improvement on the previous set-up – but the vehicle has also gained a soft-touch floor console and, more obviously, a revised steering wheel. The previous model is shown to the right – it was already good, but the difference in cabin atmosphere really is remarkable. It also feels unique within the Land Rover family – it’s easy to dismiss the Discovery as being too much like a Range Rover, and both do share many virtues, but they feel wholly distinct from each other

as it leaps into action. It’s not an everyday situation, but as a demonstration of what the engine’s got it’s really very impressive.

With an equally refined eightspeed auto box behind them, neither engine ever feels as if it needs to be held back. They’re docile at low

speeds, delivering power with a quiet smoothness that makes the Discovery tremendously pleasant around town and on country lanes – both feel like its natural habitat, as does the motorway, though the almost complete lack of engine noise here means you notice the road that much more. Thumps come through from seams and other imperfections in the surface, and you also hear an element of buffeting from around the door mirrors.

Ride-wise, too, it’s not a magic carpet the way a Range Rover is.

You could very happily cover hundreds of miles in one sitting, however, and you certainly wouldn’t feel jaded afterwards. In this respect, we found the D300 we drove slightly better than the P360 – we’d put that down to the vehicles’ differing spec levels, with the D300 being an SE model on 275/45R21 tyres and the P360 being an R-Dynamic S on 285/40R22s.

Another difference between these two models is that the R-Dynamic S has a leather interior that doesn’t feel quite as nice as it looks. The SE, on the other hand, has Miko suede

– an eco-friendly material made from recycled plastic bottles which looked wonderful in the Light Oyster finish of our test vehicle and feels superb to touch and sit in.

The big story in the Discovery’s interior, though, is the arrival of Land Rover’s latest Pivi Pro infotainment system, accessed via an 11.4” touchscreen. It looks classy and makes sense, with quick responses and intuitive controls making it easy to use. The way it’s integrated into the facia is very stylish, too, though you don’t have anywhere to rest your hand while you’re operating it, which can make it tricky to get your aim straight without taking your eyes off the road to concentrate.

The revised Discovery also now has features like wireless charging, one-touch tablet integration and wi-fi connectivity for up to eight devices, as well as an enhanced range of driver aids and, no small thing, cabin air ionisation that filters out allergens, toxins and harmful particulates. Potentially more to the point, the second-row seats have been revised for greater comfort and the cabin environment is

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07/11/2021 21:13

DRIVEN

The Discovery has been revised in many ways – including the way it looks, though this is one of the more subtle changes to previous models.The front grille is new, and all-LED lights are adopted all-round, while a full-width darkened graphic sits above a redesigned rear bumper. As before, there are two distinct model ranges – Discovery and Discovery R-Design. The latter (right) is distinguished by splitters in its front air intakes, while the standard model (left) has a metallic steering guard beneath its bumper enhanced still further by features like ambient lighting, a soft-wrapped floor console and a new design of steering wheel.

Land Rover’s business aim with of all this is to keep the Discovery cemented firmly in people’s minds as the definitive premium SUV for families. High-tech equipment is a critical part of the offering here, and the vehicle aims to look after everyone on board – even though something like one in five sales go to the Commercial model, whose second and third rows of seats come straight back out again to make way for a van conversion.

As it is, you can stow the Discovery’s seats to free up an immense 2391 litres of cargo space. That’s the stuff of epic-level practicality, and those seats are also among the few to be able to accommodate seven adults when they’re in place. Few vehicles of any kind can match that level of flexibility – and when you consider that the Disco’s masterful performance on the road is only the beginning, with segment-leading offroad ability and mighty trailer towing skills on top, you have an all-rounder of serious note.

Of course, what you do also have into the bargain is a Land Rover

that’s very much premium in its price as well as its personality.

The models we drove, a Discovery SE and an R-Dynamic S, don’t actually exist as far as the price list on Land Rover’s website at the time of writing was concerned; this is presumably something to do with the launch vehicles being left-hand drive models, but either way the D300 starts at £56,440 and the P360 at £57,200. Equipment levels will always be appropriately high, of course, but if you want the levels of luxury we enjoyed on the launch you can expect to be spending well into the sixties.

This points up an interesting footnote about the new Discovery, though. People often say that it as moved on from what those 200Tdis used to be like and is now basically the same as a Range Rover – however it’s only when you sit in one that you notice how distinct from that vehicle it is. Both are exceptionally nice, of course, but everything from the Discovery’s cabin styling and layout to the way it rides distinguish it both from the Range Rover and, equally importantly, from the Defender. They’re clearly all part of the same family, but the differences that make each of them unique become

Ever since the Discovery 3 rewrote the rule book on interior flexibility, Land Rover’s family wagon has featured market-leading seat-folding arrangements. In the current model, the second and third rows are both capable of carrying adults – and also of dropping flat to create a truly van-like load area whose capacity in this configuation is a massive 2391 litres

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Land Rover Yearbook 07/11/2021 21:13

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The Pivi Pro system is very powerful, easy to navigate around and pleasingly quick in its responses to inputs. It’s attractively housed within the Discovery’s facia, too – though we found that with nowhere to support your hand while operating it, hitting the right part of the screen can take more concentration that you want to be giving to anything that’s not the road ahead

more apparent the closer you get.

It’s a very, very clever bit of design whose subtleties go way over many heads – or, to be more charitable, that works on you without you even realising it’s there.

In this way, we’d argue that the Discovery is actually LESS like the Range Rover than those old Tdis used to be. Back then, the two vehicles were almost identical beneath their bodywork, which is something Land Rover traditionalists tend to

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forget when they’re having a moan about the new models.

That could be the jumping off point for an essay (or a diatribe), but we’re meant to be reviewing the new Discovery here. And our verdict would be that with its new engines, equipment and styling both inside and out, they’ve taken a great vehicle and made it better. It continues to be a practicality monster, a superb premium SUV and a masterpiece of high-tech ability both off-road and in

front of a trailer. It does everything, and it does it well – and with the P360 and D300 engines, it has a new-found brilliance on the road.

Our choice would be the D300.

Its performance and refinement at speed are incredibly close to those of the P360, and with so much torque at little more than tickover it’s capable of hauling you around off-road in the sort of silence you associate with electric vehicles.

That torque will have your back

when towing heavy loads, too – and fuel consumption of up to 33.9mpg sounds more palatable than the petrol motor’s 26.7mpg.

There’s no denying that the P360 is a fabulous vehicle, though, and it’s well suited to the more purposeful styling of the R-Dynamic model range. For Land Rover’s oft quoted breadth of capability, though, the D300 as tested here is close to perfect. If you changed your mind about the Discovery when the current

07/11/2021 21:13

SMALL WONDER The SAS Pink Panther desert patrol vehicles are among the most iconic military 4x4s of all time. They’re incredibly rare in real life – and this one is unique. That’s because it’s not actually a Pink Panther at all…

Sponsored by

Words and pictures: Adrian Willis

I

f you say the words ‘Pink Panther,’ to most people, they’ll think of either Peter Sellers doing a comedy French accent or a streetwise cartoon cat in a car with the worst approach angle of all time. Say them to a Land Rover fan, on the other hand, and they’ll think of another kind of vehicle altogether.

Most readers of this publication will be familiar with the vehicle officially referred to as Truck, General Service, 3/4 Ton, or FV 18064 – but universally known as the Pink Panther. It will forever be associated with the SAS, for whom it served for around two decades as a desert patrol vehicle.

A total of 72 (Fighting Vehicle) Pink Panthers were built for the SAS Regiment by Marshall of Cambridge – out of which, only around 20 examples are believed to have survived. According to Land Rover aficionados, several Pinkies were lost to the desert – a rather similar fate to the Long Range Desert Group vehicles of WWII – while other examples were deemed unsafe for public consumption come demob time and scrapped after thousands of punishing miles.

Another, meanwhile, was completely destroyed when its chutes failed to deploy during HALO (High Altitude Low Opening) jump trials at Boscombe Down, Wiltshire in 1974. Registered 10 FG 54, this unfortunate Land Rover was ever rarer than the typical Pink Panther in that it wasn’t pink.

The vehicle you see pictured here is not actually one of those surviving Pink Panthers – though I hope that perhaps it had you fooled!

It’s a faithful reproduction in wood, metal and plastic and is capable of carrying two children at approximately 8mph!

I hand-built the vehicle from scratch using 12mm marine grade plywood on the metal box frame from a mobility scooter. ‘Registered’ 10 FG 65 (65 representing the year I was born!), it boasts accurate scaled-down models of the equipment used by its older and much larger relative. For example, its two GPMGs, which I fashioned from solid mahogany, use 5.56mm rounds rather than the larger 7.62mm.

To be authentic and as realistic as possible, I trawled the internet and looked through old Land Rover publications for photographs and dimensions. I learned as much as I could about the Pink Panther – which, m among other things, made me realise that I was going to encounter problems when it came to matching the paint colour. As the story goes,

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The creativity in the detailing beggars belief – it’s the effort and skill Adrian put in here that makes the model look so realistic. The smoke grenade launchers were made using ordinary plastic piping and a bath plug and chain, for example, and the theodolite and tyre bead-breaker on the gun carrier and wheelarches were fashioned out of scrap MDF, plastic and aluminium. The shovels and pick-axe, meanwhile, were bright red beach toys – Adrian shaped them using an angle-grinder, painted them black then gave them a patina for authenticity the original mix used by the SAS was one tin of red oxide and one tin of white mixed in a drip tray and hand painted with a brace of Quartermaster’s three-inch brushes!

Interestingly, the use of pink in wartime is not new. Allegedly, the colour’s properties as a form of camouflage were discovered by accident.

The story relates to some aerial spotters who had been using certain ground markers to aid navigation. Whatever these were, they had recently been repainted – but the only paint available at the time was a mixture of whitewash and red lead paint. This eventually reacted with the extreme UV light of the desert and turned a shade of pink – making it much harder to see from the sky.

Fortunately, there are several military paint specialist who will mix an accurate representation of the colour. It’s available both in a tin for brushing or an aerosol spray can; the stuff I used was catchily known as ‘Pink (SAS – Pink Panther, Military Vehicle Paint) BS381c Matt Finish’.

Realistic smoke grenade launchers were replicated using ordinary plastic piping and a bath

plug and chain. The Convoy/Black Out Light is the remnants of a used spray can lid with a cut made into the plastic and an industrial light fitting to the rear; the bespoke canvas bag as seen in the original Pinkies to the rear of the vehicle, is the material from an old NATO camp bed. The military style GS shovels and pick-axe were bright red beach toys and were fashioned in to shape using an angle-grinder and then later painted black and given a patina.

The vehicle measures end-to-end, approximately 92” (233 cm) and, at its widest, 42” (107 cm). It is powered by two 24-volt batteries and a sealed motor; this provides thrust to the rear wheels, which are on independent shock absorbers. The vehicle has full lighting, indicators and even a genuine working Land Rover horn!

The theodolite and tyre bead-breaker on the gun carrier and wheelarches were both fabricated using scrap MDF, plastic and aluminium. I realise that when you read about some of the raw materials I used, it might sound as if I threw the vehicle together without a care, but in fact the opposite

is the case – I like to think that all these features were hand-made to exacting detail as accurate reproductions of the original.

Similarly, wherever possible every nut, bolt and area of detail has been faithfully reproduced to add realism and accuracy. The gun carriers – fashioned out of MDF and 5mm aluminium – protect two half-size wooden (L1A1) SLR rifle butts that are further shrouded using webbing obtained from an old ’58 Pattern Large Pack. The three search lights to the front and side of the vehicle are fog lights liberated from my HarleyDavidson, with fabricated metal handles fashioned to replicate the original. Moreover, there are two full size HSE standard first aid kits located on board too!

For me, getting the smaller details correct was important. I sorted the weapons, the equipment and overall look of the Land Rover but I needed to get the registration plate correct in every aspect.

I therefore researched what registration plates were issued to these particular Class B fighting vehicles and discovered they were allocated the

“The original 10 FG 65, it would appear, was sold at the Ruddington military auctions in July 1976; its whereabouts, according to the Pink Panther Register, is currently unknown” 24 4pp Pink Panther model.indd 24

Land Rover Yearbook 07/11/2021 20:36

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Left: The number plates were made using a 3D printer. Adrian primed them then finished the lettering using modeller’s silver to mimic standard MOD plates Right: The vehicle is equipped with two General Purpose Machine Guns, which Adrian carved out of solid mahogany. They use 5.56mm bullets rather than the 7.62mm of the original

numbers 10 FG 30 to 11 FG 01. The vehicles were built as regular 12-volt Series IIA trucks – mechanically similar to a standard military specification Land Rover on the Suffix D Chassis, but obviously with a special forces twist.

Interestingly, it was 10 FG 30 – the first one registered – that was used for the acceptance and for the ‘signing off’ trials. The number plate you see on this model was printed using a commercial grade 3D printer, primed and accented using modeller’s silver paint to replicate standard HM Armed Forces Registration Plates. The original 10 FG 65, it would appear, was sold at the Ruddington military auctions in July 1976;

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its whereabouts, according to the Pink Panther Register, is currently unknown. Ruddington was the site used by the MoD for auctioning off redundant ex-military vehicles and equipment and the sales were publicly advertised in local and national press.

The speedometer dials are photographs of an original Land Rover Series IIA dial which were reduced in size and then placed behind smaller car chrome trims. And lastly, the gear levers were fashioned using plastic petrol canister pouring tubes to replicate gaiters and topped off with coloured drawer knobs. To add further realism, a Bluetooth loudspeaker is discreetly located in the

engine bay and provides a continuous Land Rover Series IIA petrol engine sound when being used or shown on display.

All of these details were important to me as a I went through the process of replicating what is a truly famous piece of SAS regimental history. I hope people get as much enjoyment from looking at it as I did from making it!

If you agree that this sensational model Land Rover deserves a second look, Adrian has placed further photos and so on from the build on YouTube.

Search for “SAS Pink Panther – Special Air Service Land Rover – Toylander” and you’ll find them

27 07/11/2021 20:36

PRODUCTS

Increased options in Alcon range of performance brakes for Land Rover Defender now available through Britpart stockists

T

here was a time when Land Rover enthusiasts would spec up their dream Defender and brakes were no more than an afterthought. But many things have helped to change that.

For one, a lot more Defenders now have enough power to go fast enough that you can’t just rely on wind resistance to bring them to a halt the way you once could. For another, bigger tyres have become

28 10.5pp 2022 Yearbook Products.indd 28

much more common and once you’ve experienced brake fade once, you never want to again. And most of all, there are lots of open-spoke alloy wheel designs around these days, which means everyone can see your brakes – and nobody wants to be the guy with clangy old drums bringing up the rear, do they?

Happily, the kind of brakes that look good also tend to be the kind that work well. Also happily, if you own a Defender of a certain age,

fetching off the rear axle in favour of one from a Discovery means an instant upgrade from drums to discs.

And happiest of all, this makes you eligible for the Alcon range of Defender brake kits available through Britpart, which is now more comprehensive than ever before.

This is, not to put too fine a point on it, the good stuff. The very good stuff. Alcon is a hugely respected name in the world of performance brakes, with Bentley, Prodrive, McLaren and Aston Martin Racing among its many leading motorsport and OEM clients. It makes braking systems for military vehicles, too, so the Defender is an absolutely natural fit for what it does.

There are a lot of options in the range, but the main one is between sizes to suit 16” and 18” wheels. The former uses four-pot calipers allround, while the latter upgrades this to six-pot up front. Then you need to choose between silver or red calipers because as we’ve already established, appearances matter.

Either way, you get high-friction pads with an increased surface area for longer life and better heat

management; these also have staggered positions for even wear.

The calipers are hard-anodised and internally drilled, with no external pipework, and the pistons within them are made from stainless steel for improved resistance to thermal conductivity. The 16” kit comes with two-piece cast calipers, whereas on the 18” kit these are of a monobloc cast design.

As for the discs, these have a C-groove construction pattern all round. Front discs in the 16” kit measure 334 x 28mm, while in the 18” kit they’re 355 x 32mm; at the back, it’s 298 x 14mm in each case.

As well as the full kits, Britpart now offers replacement parts for its Alcon range. Which is just as well because though you can expect this to be an investment that’ll last a good long time, it’s one you want to protect too.

Investment? Oh yes. Expect to pay upstairs of two grand per end for these brakes, with VAT on top.

For the recently added replacement parts, it’s in the region of £200 per disc and a bit more for a pair of pads, again plus the dreaded.

Did we mention that this is the good stuff? It would need to be at that money, but since when was braking a place to cut corners. Hit up www.britpart.com for everything you need.

Land Rover Yearbook 09/11/2021 23:31

PRODUCTS

MASAI4X4 EXPANDS REPLACEMENT HEADLINING RANGE TO FIT DEFENDER 90 AND 110 TRUCK-CAB THE LATEST ADDITION TO THE MASSIVE RANGE of interior trim products available direct from Masai4x4 is a replacement headlining kit for the Defender 90, 110 and 130 Truck-Cab. Hand-crafted from a high-quality plush suede-like material, this is available in a choice of ten colours from Alston Black through to Luna White, with light Sandstone brown the most recent addition to the range. It comes to you, direct from the Masai factory, as a six-piece kit complete with fir tree fittings and colour-matched adhesive covers to keep them discreet.

Masai’s roof linings are made from a special Glass Reinforced Plastic compound. This resists water absorption and is more rigid than the Land Rover original, which is infamously prone to sagging.

The kits can be ordered with or without interior light brackets and matching sun visors, with prices starting at £625 plus VAT. You’ll find them at www.masai4x4.com.

Any 90 or 110 Truck-Cab will be suitable for Masai4x4’s new range of replacement headliners. These promise greater strength and resistance to water absorption than the original, and they’re available in a choice of ten different colours

Christmas-friendly T-600 CB kit from Thunderpole proves that good things do come in small packages CHRISTMAS IS COMING. And you know what that means. Yes: what can you ask for in the way of vehicle parts that won’t end up with you getting a pair of socks instead?

Things like winches and locking diffs are only on the cards if you’re so loaded that presents don’t mean much anyway. And stuff like bearing and seal kits make for the lamest stocking fillers of all time, however useful they might be.

That’s why a CB radio makes such a good gift. It’s the right sort of price, it comes in a nice big box for you to unwrap and while it IS for your truck, it’s universal enough not to make the whole family roll their eyes and reach for the gin.

Thunderpole’s T-600 is a perfect example. And it’s perfect in other ways too, being small enough in size to fit in more or less any vehicle – while providing full-on CB performance.

Measuring just over 10cm in width and weighing 257g, this is

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definitely a pocket rocket in the radio game. However it has a 4-watt output and a full-sized mic, as well as 8 frequency bands and a bright backlit LED display, so it’ll do the job all day (and, no small matter at this time of year, all of the night).

Talking of the mic, this has a quality electret condenser promising the sort of audio quality you can still make out perfectly even when your ears are being assaulted by a moaning diesel engine and a green lane full of scratching branches. And however bumpy things get, a properly mounted T-600 will stay put, with a strong aluminium frame shrugging off everything your off-road life can throw at it. ‘Tiny yet tough’ is Thunderpole’s way of describing the radio, and that seems to sum it up pretty nicely.

Best of all, the T-600 on its own comes at a price of £59.99. That’s a lot of CB for your cash (listen up, Santa) but better still, it’s also

available as part of Thunderpole’s Off-Roader Pack, complete with your choice of mount and antenna (length and colour), for £89.99.

All you need to do now is leave your copy of 4x4 lying around with

a ring drawn around this article.

And then Santa’s elves will visit www.thunderpole.co.uk and come Christmas afternoon, you’ll be busy with the spanners while everyone else is listening to the Queen.

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PRODUCTS

4x4 Overlander brings Autohome range of roof tents back to UK

I

talian roof tent specialist Autohome has a new importer in the UK. The company, whose tents are offered as OEM accessories by a variety of manufacturers including Mini and Land Rover, is now working with Halifax-based 4x4 Overlander – which offers its products both for sale and for hire.

4x4 Overlander is already a stockist for Maggiolina, so the company knows its tents. It says it receives regular shipments from its suppliers, so any out-of-stock items can be sourced promptly.

Adding Autohome to its repertoire was a no-brainer as this is a roof tent brand whose heritage goes all the way back to 1958. In that time, it has spread into new markets such as the United States, Australia, Japan and South Africa and, it says, become ‘the most famous Italian

brand in the world of design and production of roof tents.’

Today, Autohome offers no less than seven different models of tent, as well; as well as 60 kinds of equipment and a wide range of accessories, allowing you ‘to turn adventure and vacation in freedom into a real lifestyle.’ The company is proud of the fact that its entire range continues to be made 100% in Italy, with no commercial business or production based outside the country. To translate, it hasn’t been lured into saving money by moving its production to that well known land of rubbish knock-offs.

‘We have always been number one,’ says Autohome. ‘Not by chance. Because of our combination of imagination and “Made in Italy” quality. The result is our roof tent – the first, the original and still the biggest seller.

‘Each Autohome tent is the product of our experience and the recommendations of adventure travellers. These two skills together have created the largest range of tents available. A catalogue that is constantly kept up to date to provide you with a tent that is perfect for your needs.’

The company promises that its tents are made using the best materials, with attention to every detail and under a strict quality control regime. To prove the point, they come

with a five-year guarantee to back up their quality certification.

The aforementioned land of factories making rubbish knockoffs ensures that there are cheaper roof tents in the world. But if you ask absolutely anyone who knows about expedition preparation, they’ll tell you that if you’re going to buy one, it’s a classic case of spend it once, spend it right. And they don’t come much more right than this. To find out more, time to pay a visit to www.4x4overlander.com.

Protection and performance from Evans Waterless Engine Coolants WE ALL LIKE TO THINK we drive the coolest truck around. Whether it’s because we’ve got a slick set of alloys, a hardcore lift and big winch or lots and lots of stickers, or indeed because it was just really, really expensive, everybody wants to believe their 4x4 is cooler than the next bloke’s.

Problem is, going out and spending a grand a month on a Range Rover Sport or fitting all sorts of equipment to the mighty old wagon of your choice might be guaranteed to attract the attention of everyone who sees it. But the bloke next door might still have a cooler truck without you ever noticing.

That’s if he’s using Waterless Engine Coolants from Evans. These are like traditional water-based coolants only, well, they’re waterless. What’s the advantage of this? There are, the company says, several.

The most obvious is probably that water freezes. That’s why the good Lord gave us antifreeze, of course, but Evans’ coolants go a step further by offering long-life protection and resistance to freezing way down to below -40°C. At the other end of the scale, the coolants are also incredibly effective against overheating and boil-over. Your engine can hit 180°C before brewing up with these things in its water jacket.

Better still because they don’t contain any dissolved oxygen and are almost completely non-conductive, these coolants don’t cause oxidation or electrolysis – meaning they do an excellent job of preventing internal corrosion. And compared to the water-based alternative, Evans says they generate very low vapour pressure, thus reducing strain on the engine’s hoses, water pump and other cooling system components.

No wonder, then, that the company claims its coolants ‘are proven to improve the reliability, durability, and performance of Land Rovers and 4x4 vehicles. Whether the duty is road, field, track or desert, Evans Coolants ensure you get the most from your engine.’

There’s also the small matter of improved combustion efficiency, brought about by eliminating the pre-ignition and detonation caused by overheating – which ultimately means an engine cooled by this stuff can develop more power. All of which goes some way to explaining why Evans is used and recommended by a number of leading 4x4 specialists including Terrain Tech, Devon 4x4, Off Road Armoury and Rimmer Bros.

‘Why not protect your investment and offer long life protection to your vehicle?’ asks the company, and it’s a question you might want to ask yourself too. The answers are to be found at www.evanscoolants.co.uk, as is a link to your nearest stockist.

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Land Rover Yearbook 09/11/2021 23:31

SUPERIOR ROOF TENT

360° view with maximum privacy Autohome reinvents the concept of now you see it/now you don’t, with an innovative “black edition” mosquito net, a new hi-tech first for the Airtop 360° range.

Very thick and dark, it also protects against intruding eyes, whilst giving a full view from inside the tent: you can’t see in, but you can see out! Thanks to four additional large windows, providing all-round vision.

This is the result of sixty years’ experience as specialists, a success that confirms AUTOHOME as leader in the production of roof tents.

Available in the UK from 4x4overlander Ltd Tel: +44 1422 243966 e: info@4x4overlander.com

PRODUCTS

Light where you need it from Ring’s MAGflex inspection lamp MOST LAND ROVER OWNERS enjoy working on their vehicles. But working on your vehicle is a lot more fun if you can see what you’re doing.

The Ring MAGflex is, therefore, fun. It’s designed to help you see what you’re doing, even when what you’re doing is in the sort of dark, hidden corners every 4x4 manufacturer seems to enjoy designing in to its vehicles, and since it first came out last year it’s been lighting up the lives of technicians everywhere thanks to the extreme flexibility designed into its body.

This rotates through 360 degrees, meaning you can point it wherever it’s needed. Working hand-held, this lets you figure out all the details of how you’re about to bark your knuckles, then you can mount it in place using your choice from two hanging hooks and two adjustable magnetic bases while you get in there with the tools.

The lamp provides up to 1000 lumens of white light, in a wide-angled beam which can illuminate a large area or focus in on where the action’s happening.

Whether under the bonnet or the chassis, or plonked on to a set of ramps, it’s at home.

You can even use it away from your workshop, as it comes with a 12v charging cable as well as the usual mains unit. With the battery fully juiced, it operates cordlessly for a total of up to two and a half hours.

‘The MAGflex Utility Lamp offers more flexibility when it comes to inspection lighting,’ says Ring’s Roisin Gaughan. It has a wide-angle illumination source and is also portable, powerful and hands-free.’

The MAGflex costs £44.99 and Ring says it’s available from all good motor factors. You can find out more at www.ringautomotive.com.

Lucas Classic adds high-tension leads for early Rover V8 engines

IF YOUR LAND ROVER OF CHOICE happens to be powered by the good old 3.5-litre Rover V8 engine, it is by definition a classic. Or if it’s not a classic, it’s a bitsa.

Either way, it’s the kind of Land Rover we love. Of course, they’re all the kind of Land Rover we love, but you get what we’re saying. Anyway, also either way, to ensure the old lump keeps on powering it, rather than turning into an expensive form of ballast, Lucas Classic has a constantly developing range of parts designed for older Land Rovers.

Available through Britpart, as is the norm with kit from Lucas Classic, this is all about the sort of stuff a vehicle needs to keep running – especially in the electrical department. Hence the latest introductions, which include high-tension leads for the much loved eight-pot.

Available separately, first there’s the single lead from the coil to the distributor and then there’s the eight-strong array going from the dizzy to the spark plugs. The only way you can believe how big a difference you can make by fitting a new set of these is if you’ve done it in the past and seen the results, so if you’ve got an old V8 in your life, these are for you. They’re at lucasclassic.com/landrover.

RIMMER BROS GOES BACK TO THE FUTURE WITH NEW PARTS CATALOGUE FOR RANGE ROVER CLASSIC RIMMER BROS IS ONE OF the biggest names in the Land Rover parts business. But did you know that the company’s first full parts catalogue was for the Range Rover Classic?

That was in 2000, to celebrate 30 years since the launch of the original Rangey, and since then Rimmer has brought out similar catalogues for the Range Rover P38A, Range Rover L322, Range Rover Sport (up to 2009), Discovery, Discovery 2, Discovery 3, Discovery 4, Freelander, Freelander 2, Defender (up to 2006) and Defender (2007-on). Quite a lot of Land Rovers there, then.

Most recently, the company has brought out its latest collection for… the Range Rover Classic. As if to prove what an enduring vehicle this is, more than a quarter of a century since the last one left the factory it’s still worthy of a new edition containing 210 pages of parts, upgrades and accessories for the original Rangey.

‘Since the early 1980s,’ says the company, ‘Rimmer Bros has specialised in supplying parts for British cars.

In 1982, we started selling Classic Triumph parts and by the mid 80’s were supplying stainless steel exhaust systems for Land Rovers and other 4x4 vehicles.

‘We are now pleased to return to the beginning of the Land Rover parts side of our business by introducing a completely revamped and updated parts and accessories catalogue for the Range Rover Classic, to replace the old catalogue that has served us and our customers so well for the last 21 years. This new catalogue details what has been a continuously growing range of genuine, OEM and aftermarket parts and accessories.

‘Our website also features this catalogue plus any new products or part number changes.’

You can get your hands on Rimmer Bros’ new Range Rover Classic parts catalogue, or indeed any of the company’s catalogues for other Land Rovers, absolutely free. Just pay a visit to their website at www.rimmerbros. com, and prepare to do some serious shopping.

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PRODUCTS

Speedliner Europe introduces new ‘pour-shake-spray’ Speedtex liner product for Land Rovers and other heavy-duty applications

SPEEDLINER EUROPE HAS LAUNCHED a new ‘pour-shake-spray’ liner product for the rear load areas of pick-ups trucks, trailer beds, Land Rovers and other 4x4s. Called Speedtex Easy Sprayliner, this can also be used to protect vans, boat decks and ‘many other small to medium size applications.’

Speedtex uses Speedliner’s well established spray-on liner formula, which has been successfully protecting high-traffic vehicle surfaces for 21 years.

It’s a 2K polyurethane/polyurea hybrid product which, the company says ‘dries quickly and provides tough, durable, anti-corrosion wear and tear protection combined with excellent UV properties.’ Having prepped the product by mixing it, it’s ready to apply using a standard underseal spray gun – though you can also brush or roll it on to your vehicle.

Speedtex is available in 1 or 4-litre kits and comes pre-coloured in either black or grey. There’s also a selection of 20 stock colours available, as well as a self-colour version allowing you to match it to your own vehicle.

In addition, there’s also an anti-bacterial, anti-microbial version available – ideal if your vehicle is used for carrying animals, be they pets or livestock.

This is also suitable in vehicles used for carrying food or medical supplies, which might be relevant if you’re one of the many 4x4 owners who volunteer in a response network.

Want to know more about Speedtex Easy Sprayliner? Of course you do… and in order to do that, the very first thing you need to know is that you’ll find it at www.speedtexeuro.com.

Land Rover Yearbook 10.5pp 2022 Yearbook Products.indd 33

DAVANTI TERRATOURA CARRIES COBLEY TO MODIFIED PRODUCTION CLASS TITLE IN MAIDEN BXCC SEASON

MOST COMPETITORS IN THE BRITISH CROSS COUNTRY CHAMPIONSHIP run on specialised kevlar-reinforced rally tyres. But Edd Cobley claimed victory in this year’s Modified Production Class in his Defender 110 – running on everyday Davanti Terratoura A/Ts. After a wipe-out in 2020, the BXCC returned for 2021 with a six-round calendar which was promptly reduced to four thanks to the lingering winter lockdown. Competitors eventually took on courses at Tong, Sweet Lamb, Kielder and Walters Arena, in conditions including some of the most intense summertime heat ever experienced on a UK safari.

Designed and engineered in Britain, the Terratoura is a rugged all-terrain which was first launched on to the market in 2015. This year was its maiden season on the BXCC – making it all the more impressive that following the final round, at Walters Arena in South Wales, it has proved itself perfectly suited to the rigours of off-road racing.

This despite no less than three wheels being destroyed by boulders as Cobley drifted off-course while going all-out for a victory that would make the title his. As it turned out, he needn’t have worried; by the end of a hard weekend’s racing, he was more than seven minutes ahead of second-placed Pat Masters.

‘All four courses this season were really tough, said Cobley. ‘Everyone pushes their tyres, their cars and themselves past the limit in their efforts to win – and we were no exception.

‘We had grip for days and even when we took off, we had full control of our landings thanks to Terratoura A/T’s unique design. Throughout the season we also had fewer blow-outs than the majority and we were able to really push the 110 as hard as she could go because we had a great, reliable base under us.’

‘The title was always my goal and to achieve that is an incredible feeling. It was a tough championship this year but I want to thank the organisers for ensuring it could go ahead.

‘Having been using Terratoura A/T for everyday off-roading for a couple of years, to take it out competitively and become British Champion in my class is an amazing feeling. For a standard all-terrain tyre this is a fantastic achievement. Terratoura A/T is one of the best all-terrain tyres on the market – this victory only serves to confirm that.’

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PRODUCTS

Terrafirma introduces wide range of off-road equipment for Discovery 2

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errafirma has launched a major new range of off-road accessories for the Land Rover Discovery 2. Designed to help turn the vehicle into a workable alternative to the old-shape Defender, this includes suspension upgrades, armour, recovery equipment and more.

‘With Defender values skyrocketing and their owners feeling all precious about getting them dirty,’

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explains Terrafirma, ‘the Discovery 2 now has a lot of appeal. It’s relatively easy to work on, comfortable, capable and affordable.

‘Land Rover directed a lot of effort into improving the road manners of the D2 over its predecessor, to such an extent that some of its off-road credentials were compromised.

This has provided the development team at Terrafirma with the perfect opportunity to enhance its off-road

performance with not just the target of matching a well set up Defender, but also to create a brand new look.’

Leading the way on the latter point is Terrafirma’s new ‘Raid’ style winch bumper. With tubular construction and infill panels with swaged holes, this was inspired

by Baja and rally raid spaceframe vehicles whose design combines light weight with extreme strength.

Terrafirma’s bumper improves the Disco 2’s approach angle while also offering good protection against impacts and a sturdy mounting point for a winch.

There’s also a matching rear bumper, which will accept the vehicle’s original tail lights and can incorporate both standard towing equipment and Terrafirma’s own receiver hitches. In addition, it can be specified with a swing-away spare wheel carrier on one side and a jerry can/shovel and high-lift jack carrier on the other.

Both bumpers are fitted with swivel recovery points. And to complement the Raid bumpers, a new set of rock sliders has been introduced to create a barrier between the Disco 2’s sills and any ill-intentioned rocks.

You wouldn’t expect all this to come without a suspension lift, and sure enough Terrafirma offers

a solution here too. More than one solution, in fact.

‘To follow a Defender through the rocks,’ it says, ‘a brand new set of +5” travel 8-Stage Adjustable Remote Reservoir shocks have been specified which when fitted can enable the D2 to flex with the best.

Add front and rear hydraulic bump stops and you can tackle obstacles in full attack mode.

‘For something less extreme, the +3” 4-Stage Adjustable Shocks give four levels of damping from comfort through to sport, while significantly increasing wheel travel.’

Good suspension is not just about the springs and shocks, of course, and Terrafirma offers everything you could imagine in the way of associated hardware. High-angle watts linkages, caster correction bushes, dislocation cones, anti-roll bar links, extended turrets, crossmember spacers… there’s a world of ways in which you can make a Disco 2 better off-road, and they’re all covered here.

On the steering front, Terrafirma’s well known RTC damper can be fitted using a kit tailored to the Disco 2. And since stopping matters every bit as much as going, the company’s wavy-edged CDG brake discs are now available for the vehicle. These

Land Rover Yearbook 09/11/2021 23:31

PRODUCTS

COMPLETE READY TO DRIVE CARS OR SELF BUILD KITS • Build manuals & full kits,

COMPLETE READY TO DRIVE controlled speed, lights, horn, CARS OR SELF BUILD KITS

• Pre-cut panel sets • Build manuals & full kits, & ready-made bodies available controlled speed, lights, horn, • Manual includes full component • Pre-cut panel sets and body cutting dimensions & ready-made bodies available • Battery powered DIY kits or parts • Manual includes full component For more information please contact 01291 626141 sales@toylander.com www.toylander.com and body cutting dimensions

COMPLETE READY TO DRIVE •CARS BatteryOR powered kits or parts SELFDIY BUILD KITS

For more information please contact 01291 626141

promise significantly improved stopping power, especially when combined with Terrafirma’s Performance brake pads and 2” or 5” long stainless brake hoses.

As always, braking can be an easy area to overlook when you’re speccing up an off-road project. But it doesn’t take much of an increase in tyre size to make brake fade an issue – we used to run one a Disco 2 with a V8 engine, auto box and no compression braking at all – and even just on 265/75R16s, we’ll never forget how alarming things could get on the way down long hills.

Terrafirma recommends that to avoid rubbing, 265/75R16 is indeed the ideal size for a Discovery 2 built using its new range of kit. You won’t need to worry about messing up your overall gearing at this size, either – and though a height of 31.6” sounds like not a lot compared to the madcap Defenders you still see from time to time, in the real world and in the right hands that’s more than enough for a Disco 2 to be able

sales@toylander.com • Build manuals www.toylander.com & full kits,

COMPLETE READY TO DRIVE controlled speed, lights, horn, CARS OR SELF BUILD KITS

• Pre-cut panel sets • Build manuals & full kits, & ready-made bodies available controlled speed, lights, horn, • Manual includes full component • Pre-cut panel sets and body cutting dimensions & ready-made bodies available • Battery powered DIY kits or parts • Manual includes full component COMPLETE READYsales@toylander.com TO DRIVE For more information please contact 01291 626141 COMPLETE www.toylander.com and body cutting dimensions READY TO DRIVE

Toylander 3

CARS OR SELF BUILD KITS to follow almost everywhere the •CARS BatteryOR powered kits or parts SELFDIY BUILD KITS • Build manuals & full kits, heavy mob can go.

COMPLETE READY TO DRIVE • Build manuals & full kits, For more information please contact 01291 626141 sales@toylander.com www.toylander.com controlled speed, lights, horn, READY TO®DRIVE Further items in Terrafirma’s new CARS OR SELF COMPLETE BUILD KITSspeed, lights, controlled horn, based on the 1972 Series 3 Land Rover CARS OR SELF BUILD KITS • Pre-cut panel sets Disco 2 range include a spare wheel • Build manuals & full kits, • Pre-cut panel sets & ready-made bodies available • Build & full kits, mount to let you fit a tyre of this controlled speed, lights, horn,manuals & ready-made bodies available controlled speed, lights, horn, • Manual includes full component size on the vehicle’s back door. And • Pre-cut panel sets includes full component • Manual and body cutting dimensions • Pre-cut panel sets of course there’s always room for & ready-made bodiesand available body cutting dimensions ready-made • Battery powered DIY&kits or parts bodies available a raised air intake: also new to the • Manual includes full component • Battery powered DIY kits or parts • Manual includes full component For more information please contact 01291 626141 sales@toylander.com www.toylander.com and body cutting dimensions range, this has a reversible ram air For more information please contact 01291 626141 sales@toylander.com www.toylander.com and body cutting dimensions • Battery powered DIY kits or parts intake made from high grade UV • Battery powered DIY kits or parts and temperature-stableFor rotational more information please contact 01291 626141 sales@toylander.com www.toylander.com For more information please contact 01291 626141 sales@toylander.com www.toylander.com moulded plastic.

‘Terrafirma’s new range of Raidinspired accessories and long-travel suspension set-ups will give your Discovery 2 a fantastic new look and incredible off-road capability,’ says the company. If you’re reasonably capable with the spanners, you should be able to instal everything you see here on your driveway – and Terrafirma promises that in the process of doing so, you’ll only need to make the minimum in the way of cuts or modifications to the fibre of the vehicle itself. You can find out a whole lot more by paying a visit to terrafirma4x4.com.

Buy now ready made or build it yourself!

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PRODUCTS

LED products from Osram promise to light the way ahead this winter

A

s we write these words, Christmas is very much on the way. Which means gloomy days and long, dark nights. Which in turn means you have all the excuse you’ll ever need to fit your Landy with some (literally) shiny new LEDs. LEDs such as these little beauties from Osram, for example. Designed to help you see your way on pitch-black rural roads, dirt tracks and off-road terrain, they’re built to dish out maximum performance while also shrugging off the sort of knocks, scrapes and dirty dousings that come with the territory.

First up, there’s the FX500-CB SM Lightbar. This 65cm unit provides an array of 20 high-performance LEDS whose 6000 Kelvin output and 5500 lumen flux provides what Osram calls ’daylight conditions’ up to a distance of more than a quarter of a mile away. A useful feature is a reflector which diverts the LEDs’ beam away from oncoming traffic to prevent needlessly dazzling other road users.

With a choice of 12 and 24-volt inputs, the FX500-CB SM is suitable for use with a wide range of vehicles in the utility, agricultural and off-road

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sectors. It’s designed with all the right failsafes to protect it from overheating or excess voltage, and its tough polycarbonate lens and IP67 protection promise a robust approach to everyday abuse and environmental factors alike.

The VX80-WD round LED light is sealed to IP67 too, and like the FX500 it has 12 and 24-volt input options allowing it to be used on everything from an everyday Land Rover to a combine harvester. It contains four LEDs, giving it a range of up to 240 metres. Once again, it

delivers a thoroughly hefty 6000Kelvin performance for conditions similar to daylight.

Here, a 1150-lumen power package promises the highest possible optical efficiency as well as even distribution of light. Like the FX500-CB SM, the unit was built for a 5000-hour lifespan.

The VX80-WD is a high-value driving lamp carrying an affordable RRP of £59.99 – a figure which

sounds better value than ever when you consider that it comes with a two-year guarantee.

The FX500-CB SM Lightbar, meanwhile, is priced at a more premium £349.99. That’s a lot of light for your money, and this time it comes with a highly impressive five-year guarantee. There’s a wealth of information about these LED products, and a whole lot more besides, at www. osram.co.uk.

Land Rover Yearbook 09/11/2021 23:32

The World’s World’s bestThe accessories The World’s best accessories for Land Rover best accessories for Land Rover Discovery 2 for Land Rover Discovery 2 Discovery 2

The brand new range of Terrafirma accessories includes: The brand new range of Terrafirma accessories includes: Raid style winch bumper Front and rear light mounting bars Dislocation cones and rear bumper The brand new range of Terrafi rma accessories includes: +5" Remote Reservoir shocks Extended shock turrets Raid style winch bumper Raid sliders andstyle rearrock bumper with treestyle barswinch bumper Raid Raidrear stylebumper rock sliders and Underbody protection with tree bars Raid style rock sliders Raised air intake Underbody protection with tree bars

Front and rear light mounting bars

+3" 4 Stage Adjustable shocks +5" Remote Reservoir shocksbars Front and rear light mounting Hydraulic bumpReservoir stop kitsshocks +3" Remote 4 Stage Adjustable shocks +5" RTC steering damper Hydraulic bump stopmounting kits +3" 4 Stage Adjustable shockskit High articulation watts RTC steering damper mounting kit Hydraulic bump stoplinkage kits

Dislocation cones

Extended bump stops Extended shock turrets Dislocation cones Polyurethane suspension Extended shock bump stops bushes Extended turrets Polyurethane suspension Extended bump stops bushes

And much more!

Spare wheel mount Polyurethane suspension bushes Raised air intake Underbody protection And much more!

High steering articulation wattsmounting linkage kit RTC damper Spare wheel mount Raised air intake much more!

High articulation linkage See the guys putwatts it through itsAnd paces on Youtube Spare wheel mount from ‘Car Throttle’ See the guys from ‘Car Throttle’ put it through its paces on Youtube See the guys from ‘Car Throttle’ put it through its paces on Youtube

Terrafirma Serious 4x4 Accessories: Certified Manufactured to Specification Terrafirma Serious 4x4 Accessories: ForCertifi more ed information Manufactured to Specification visit www.terrafi rma4x4.com Terrafi rma Serious 4x4 Accessories: For more information email sales@terrafi rma4x4.com Certifi ed Manufactured to Specification visit www.terrafirma4x4.com For more information email sales@terrafi rma4x4.com visit www.terrafirma4x4.com 20900 Allmakes DiscoveryAccessoriesAdverts - The Landy 265 x 338.indd 1 email sales@terrafi rma4x4.com

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PRODUCTS

Silverline becomes first UK retailer to stock new Bridgestone Dueler M/T 674 mud-terrain tyre

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ilverline Wheel and Tyre Centre is a well known name in the off-road world. And the Warwick-based specialist has become the first retailer in the UK to stock Bridgestone’s new Dueler M/T 674.

Designed to meet the demands of hardcore off-road driving, the M/T 674 promises ‘incredible mud traction and grip, outstanding off-road stability in all conditions, improved tread-wear balance for increased life and excellent braking performance.’

It’s a rugged mud-terrain whose blend of control, traction and durability promises to make it a major new player in the premium off-road tyre market. And at the time of writing, you can only get it by going to Silverline.

This of course is something which people have been doing for many years. Silverline already offers bespoke conversions, tyre and wheel packages, alloy polishing and finishes, split-rim rebuilds, custom colours, special finishes and even diamond cutting – making it one of the most comprehensive full-service wheel and tyre specialists anywhere.

That’s why more and more 4x4 enthusiasts are making the journey to Warwick to avail themselves of the service offered by Centre Manager Lee Cartwright and founder Antony Barnsley. And with the arrival of the new Dueler, that number is only going to increase.

‘We’ve got more than 30 years’ experience in the 4x4 world and

we know a good tyre when we see one,’ commented Antony. ‘And the Bridgestone Dueler M/T 674 really is an incredible tyre. We’re thrilled to be the first 4x4 dealer to stock the product.

‘Having driven on it on harsh terrain, we can’t recommend it highly

enough. It’s a rugged, durable tyre and its performance in extreme conditions is like nothing we’ve come across before.’

Praise indeed. Silverline is currently offering the new Dueler M/T 674 as part of a tyre and wheel package in four different sizes:

235/85R16, 245/75R16,245/70R17 and 265/70R17.

Want to know more? Of course you do. For more information about the M/T 674, and indeed everything else Silverline can do for you, you can contact Lee or Antony by visiting www.silverlinewheels-tyres.com.

Minerva range of lubricants now available through Euro4x4parts MINERVA WAS THE ROMAN GODDESS of wisdom, medicine, commerce, poetry, handicrafts and the arts. In later life, she also became the goddess of war. Those were the days before HRT, see.

Anyway, Minerva was clearly a goddess who liked to keep herself busy. And she still does, because now she’s also the goddess of oil.

Minerva is a French company which makes a wide range of oils for engines, gearboxes, transfer cases and axles. And your vehicle has some or all of these things.

The company says its products are driven by ‘constant innovation, advanced technology and a deep respect for the environment’ and that they have more than 65 official approvals as OEM lubricants. The result is ‘perfect protection for all the mechanical parts of your 4x4.’

The range includes various grades of engine oil, including one for competition cars and a fully synthetic 0W20 for units with DPFs; ATF and steering fluid; and gearbox and diff oils, again in different grades – including one specifically for LSDs. Depending on the product, Minerva’s lubes come in 1, 2, 5 or 25-litre cans – or, if you’re a a workshop user, 60, 210 and 1000-litre drums. They’ve recently been added to the range on offer from Euro4x4parts – which you’ll find at www.euro4x4parts.com.

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Terrafirma accessories are available from over 100 distributors worldwide Wheels, Brakes and Drivetrain

Suspension

Protection

Exterior

Lighting

Interior and Performance

For more information visit www.terrafirma4x4.com email sales@terrafirma4x4.com

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PRODUCTS

GEARMATE ADDS TO TRADITIONAL PICK-UP PORTFOLIO WITH HEAVY-DUTY LAND ROVER STORAGE SYSTEM GEARMATE IS PERHAPS BEST KNOWN for the storage systems it makes for onetonne pick-ups.

But the Warwickshire company also offers modular systems for first-generation Land Rover Defenders of all ages – allowing you to organise the kit you carry without losing the convenience of a usable floor in the back of your vehicle.

The floor in question has a rubber anti-slip surface, making it more usable than ever. And beneath it is a drawer system with a strong, robustly built carcase and adjustable dividers. The main drawer is lockable and pulls out with full extension, making it easy to get at what’s inside it, and next to it is an addition locking pod for further secure storage.

The drawer unit can be combined with further storage solutions such as a slide, racking or dog box to make it handier than ever. And, no small matter, it’s easy to instal.

‘Gearmate are unique on the market as we are the only manufacturers who offer a no drilling solution, allowing the system to be easily transferred between vehicles if required,’ says the company. ‘Our unique bracket systems have been designed using 3D scan data of the different manufacturers’ beds to locate the tie-down points. This means a straightforward, hassle-free installation with no risk of endangering the vehicle’s warranty.’

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Not a problem in the case of a Defender, you’d think. But talking of warranties, the Gearmate unit comes with a 12-month no-quibble guarantee covering its structure as well as all its rails, bearings, handles and locks.

We’ve got one of the company’s systems on one of our vehicles, so we can say from experience that it’s very good kit indeed.

At £849 plus the VAT, one of these units is definitely not as cheap as buying an old ammo box at a sortout and bolting it through your Defender’s floor. But it’s not as pricey as some of the solutions you see on the market, either – and, as we say, it’s pukka stuff. Gearmate calls it ‘the perfect system to fit in your Land Rover,’ which they would, but given the opportunity we’re inclined to think you might agree. The company is to be found at www. gearmate.co.uk.

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The World’s best accessories for Land Rover Defender Terrafirma Serious 4x4 Accessories: Certified Manufactured to Specification For more information visit www.terrafirma4x4.com www.allmakes4x4.com email sales@terrafirma4x4.com

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PRODUCTS

Goodridge adds new brake line kits for Landies

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oodridge Performance has updated its range of Premium Performance braided brake line kits, which now includes the Land Rover Defender, Discovery, Range Rover

and Range Rover Sport among its list of applications. These join an extensive range of existing stainless steel braided brake line kits for Land Rover models dating as far back as 1970.

The kits are intended for use as a direct replacement for the OEM brake lines, meaning they’re designed for vehicles on standard-height suspension. However Goodridge also has a range available for lifted vehicles – which, of course, are often the ones most in need of uprated brakes.

Either way, Goodridge says its performance brake lines offer improved efficiency from their PTFE-lined stainless steel braided hoses and increased corrosion resistance properties thanks to their stainless-steel fittings. The result is greater reliability and what the company calls ‘improved braking characteristics at a very reasonable price point.’ Goodridge says you can expect ‘a confidence-inspiring solidity to the brake pedal, coupled with improved and predictable braking feel.’

Most importantly, of course, the hoses are available in 13 different colours. So if you’re adding them as part of a look-at-me rebuild or modup job, you won’t be confounded by any ugly clashes.

You might think we’re joking there. But no, because the full list of

vehicles included in this latest addition to the Goodridge range is: • Defender 90 (pre-1999) • Defender 110/130 (pre-1999) • Defender 90/110/130 (1999-2004) • Defender 90/110/130 with ABS (1999-2004) • Defender 90/110/130 with ABS (2004-2016) • Defender 90/110/130 no ABS (2004-2016) • Discovery 3/4 • Range Rover L322 • Range Rover Sport L320 These models join a range of more than 160,000 Premium Performance Brake Line Kits. So even if you don’t own a Land Rover, paying a visit to www.goodridge.com will almost certainly turn up some brake kit worth stopping for.

MUD-UK INTRODUCES RETRO-STYLE KNOBS FOR DEFENDERS’ GEAR AND TRANSFER LEVERS IT WOULD BE HARD TO EXAGGERATE how much we love these Heritage Gear Knobs from MudUK. Moulded from 100% bakelite, just like the factory-fitted originals from way back in 1948, these UK-made accessories bring a bit of retro chic to the cabin of any Defender they’re used in – with the option of red and yellow for the diff lock lever offering a clear nod to those used throughout 35 years of Series trucks.

For the primary gearbox, your choice is between the classic mushroom-style Series I/II/IIA knob or the later ball-shape used on the Series III. In each case, they’re available with the reverse position next to first (to suit the LT77 and LT85 Santana boxes) and below fifth (to suit the later R380).

On the transfer box, meanwhile, the red and yellow options are both suited to the LT230 – as used on all five-speed Defenders (and autos, if you’re the proud owner of a 50th Anniversary or NAS model). For reference, these use an M10 thread, while the main gearbox uses 0.5” UNF. Got a Puma? Sorry. The knobs aren’t currently available to fit the Getrag gear lever you’ll find on 2.4 and 2.2 TDCi Defenders.

The knobs, which are supplied with a lock nut to help you line them up perfectly, cost £30 plus shipping directly from Mud-UK. Taste is personal, but as far as we’re concerned these are among the coolest accessories we’ve seen for a Defender’s cabin. You’ll find them by visiting www.mudstuff.co.uk.

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Land Rover Defender Upgrades & Accessories

www.masai4x4.com

HEADLININGS & WINDOW TRIMS

/masai4x4

Hand crafted and covered in ten different colours.

Made from GRP & lined with a plush suede-like finish.

Alston (Black)

Stornaway (Dark Grey)

Defender 90 PUMA Silver (Light Grey)

r1 10

Honey Biege (Tan)

Defender 90

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Sandbank Biege (Sand)

Defender 90 TD5

Luna White (Ivory)

Coffee (Dark Brown)

Cocoa (Medium Brown)

Hazel (Light Brown)

REPLACEMENT SEAT COVERS

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MASAI 4X4: A WIDE RANGE OF EXCLUSIVE ENHANCEMENTS FOR YOUR DEFENDER – AND ALWAYS ORIGINAL QUALITY! MASAI 4X4 OFFERS AN EXCLUSIVE RANGE of high-quality vehicle enhancement accessories and parts – mainly for the Land Rover Defender 90, 110 and 130.

Roof racks, spare wheel carriers, panoramic and traditional windows, seat covers, side steps, rear steps, lamp guards, sporting boxes, tree

sliders and winch bumpers are just some of the many top-class products available through the company.

In addition to its accessory range, Masai also offers full Defender restoration and fitting services at its well equipped premises in Lichfield, Staffordshire. You can even wait in

a visitor room with high-speed wi-fi, television and unlimited tea and coffee while its skilled technicians work on your vehicle.

In the words of Masai founder and owner Ferzan Kuman: ‘From a family tradition going back to 1953, you can be assured our designs, materials and engineering are of

the highest standards – built to last and Always Original Quality.’

Masai ships its products to customers all round the world.

A selection of those products are featured on these pages – and you can browse the company’s whole range by paying a visit to its website at www.masai4x4.com.

The original and best panoramic windows – from the company that created them MASAI IS THE ORIGINAL creator of its flagship Panoramic Tinted Windows for the Land Rover Defender 90 and 110.

Unique edge-to-edge tinted, toughened glass delivers a beautiful, minimalist appeal. The design delivers looks and performance all in one – modern, sleek and rugged.

Automotive glass, particularly bonded windows, are among Masai’s specialties. As well as Land Rover windows, the company produces a range of windows and side-opening camper style windows.

WARRIOR BUMPER HAS BOTH STYLE AND SUBSTANCE THE WARRIOR WINCH BUMPER is Masai’s secret weapon for your 90 or 110. Suitable for use with most winches, it has a zinc-plated steel base and comes in a three-piece kit, making it easy to assemble prior to fitting.

The Warrior bumper is available with a stylish black powder finish to its centre section, and it can also be painted to match your vehicle. Masai offers it with an optional steering guard, too – and if you choose the standard zinc-coated finish, you can get both parts painted to match your truck.

Seldom can a hardcore off-road accessory ever have looked this smart!

MASAI OFFERS VARIOUS ROOF RACK DESIGNS including Tubular, Flat and Luggage. The racks are designed to be the perfect fit on to your Defender, at an affordable price. Made from zinc-plated steel and black powder-coated, they also offer the option of adding mountable LED Lights and a Rear Access Ladder to give a full effect.

MASAI’S ROOF RACK COVERS are the perfect way to protect and secure your luggage against tough weather conditions. Made from heavy-duty 600-denier polyester, they are extremely hard-wearing, rip-proof and waterrepellent, and they come fitted with straps for securing them to the rack below.

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Masai 4x4’s Interior Trim Shop – a new level of cabin quality Masai 4x4’s interior Trim Shop brings a new level of quality to your Land Rover’s cabin. Defender owners are now able to restore their interior to pristine better-than-new condition with Masai’s signature high-quality head lining and window interior trim products.

AN EYE-CATCHING WAY TO KEEP YOUR DEFENDER’S CABIN TIDY MASAI’S SPORTING BOX AND REAR STORAGE DRAWERS are a fantastic buy if you need secure storage in your Defender and want to keep its interior looking tidy. The Sporting Box itself fits inside the rear internal floor space between the vehicle’s wheelarches and enables you to neatly store, protect and lock away items which you regularly or permanently keep stored in your vehicle.

Available in matte black, the unit comes with soft carpeting on the top and soft-close, smooth-running Accuride drawer runners capable of holding up to 120kg. These can be perfect for shooting season, vets or other medical professionals as well as a wide range of other uses.

HEAD LININGS Masai has the answer to saggy head linings. To avoid water absorption, the company’s roof lining is made from special Glass Reinforced Plastic (GRP).

This also gives a much greater degree of rigidity than the Land Rover original, which is infamously prone to sagging.

The roof lining is hand-crafted from high-quality Plush Suede-like material. it’s sold as a complete kit with fittings and comes in a choice of no less than ten colours from Alston Black through to Luna White.

INTERNAL WINDOW TRIMS Masai developed its internal window trim range to complement its head linings, providing Defender owners with access to the same high-quality upgrades. Made from high-quality Premium Suedette and available in the same choice of nine colours as the head-linings, Masai’s internal window trim range fits all Defender models from 1985 to 2017.

SEAT COVERS

MASAI’S TUBULAR WINCH BUMPER is designed to fit the Defender 90 and 110, with or without air-con, and to accommodate most of the winches on the market. It is manufactured from steel, zinc-plated for long-lasting rust protection then powder coated in black. It will give your Defender a tough, rugged look.

Masai’s craftsmen have created a range of seat covers to enable Defender owners to replace or upgrade worn out, torn and scruffy originals. The range includes specific versions for the 110 and 90, covering 200 Tdi, 300 Tdi , TD5 and Puma TDCi models.

Made from cruelty-free soft vinyl leatherette, these seat covers come complete with rear map pockets and, for additional comfort, a layer of foam covering. They’re available to be bought individually, as pairs or as a complete set.

Additional options include covers for inward-facing seats and 60/40 split seats, as well as Deluxe and ‘Flute’ styles with piping.

The covers come in a range of attractive colours – to view the choices on offer, simply pay a visit to www.masai4x4.com.

FITTING SERVICE Masai’s products appeal to Defender owners looking to breathe new life into their vehicles. If that’s you, don’t forget that the company also offers a comprehensive fitting and restoration service at its modern premises just north of Birmingham in Lichfield, Staffordshire.

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MODERN CLASSIC Jimmy Whitmore loves anything on four wheels – just so long as it’s interesting.

With a background in engineering and a relentless drive to innovate, he doesn’t do pile-it-high rebuilds. That’s why his Range Rover manages to be convincingly modern – while still retaining all its original authenticity Sponsored by

Words and pictures: Dan Fenn

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ot long after Jimmy Whitmore finished building his 1986 Range Rover Classic, he drove it into his local town and parked up to go to the shops. As he was getting out, a young couple came walking past.

‘That’s nice,’ remarked the woman, gesturing at Jimmy’s truck.

‘Yes,’ said the man. ‘It must be the new Range Rover.’

Now, there is indeed a new Range Rover due out sometime in the next year. And perhaps the chap knew more than he seemed and thought it might be a cleverly disguised development mule. Or maybe he was just dazzled by the standard of the rebuild Jimmy’s done and, oblivious to what Range Rovers have become over the last couple of decades, thought it really was a new one.

Either way, it’s safe to Jimmy was pretty happy with what he heard.

He didn’t rebuild his Rangey as an out-and-out off-roader, or an out-andout street machine, or an out-and-out concours classic, but as a nice old four-door made right and brought into the modern world.

There are people in this world who have learned how to make a living by restoring Land Rovers to a formula and putting huge tickets on them. Jimmy is not like that. Coming from a family with a seam of engineering brilliance running deep and wide through it, he combines enormous knowledge with a maverick spirit and, in particular, a heartfelt love of cars.

He’s got time for any vehicle with a bit of soul to it. Which of course means he’s mainly into older ones. When we visited his yard, on a farm near Exeter, we were greeted by a sight to stir the soul: classic Jaguars, Mercedes and a Rover P5 all in various stages of being brought back to life, a couple of Japanese 4x4s, a Volkswagen Caddy with a tremendouslycolourful history involving everything from winning a race against an F-Type SVR to being used as a makeshift bedsit…

His current daily is a first-generation Scirocco. In the workshop, the remnants of an old SL-Class Merc are being grafted on to a Mk4 Chevy Corvette. You get the idea.

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‘I bought it in London. It had the hookiest MOT I had ever seen – I thought it was going to kill me numerous times on the drive back to Devon!’

‘I’m not so much into off-roading now,’ he says, ‘but it was a big part of my life growing up. I like tuned classic Jaguars and burning off sausage wagons on the autobahn, or at least I did before the virus. I had epic times on enduro bikes, including a 1994 KTM LC4 Dakar 620 and a Yamaha XT600 called Wendy the Wonder Bike which I rode coast-to-coast in the US when I was 20 – a solo trip, all off-road or back roads, on the northern route through California, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, Minnesota and so on. I’ve driven 4x4s all over Europe, especially Scandinavia, and the USA, and I also had a mental Baja Bug that spent a lot of time airborne in the Rockies!’

His story includes plenty of Land Rovers, too.

Most of them capable of making a rivet-counter’s blood run cold. Most things Jimmy builds have a touch of the street fighter about them – that P5, for example, is going to go back together with

the 4.6-litre V8 from a mental-era Rover 75 under its bonnet. And when he starts talking about the rear-wheel-drive, TVR-engined Series IIA he built for a friend who wanted something for destroying Porsches in London, you know you’re dealing with someone who’s in it for the love of driving.

That wasn’t the only one he reimagined, either. ‘I had a military 110 which I rebuilt with a custom rear crossmember and powder-coated chassis,’ he tells us. ‘It ran a Cummins 4BD1T with large turbo and intercooler (300bhp and 610lbf.ft), Santana 5-speed box,

LT high-ratio transfer box and high-ratio Salisbury axles front and rear. It would do 115 at 3100rpm!

‘I drove it all over Europe and Scandinavia many times. But it ate gearboxes, so I moved away from Land Rovers and big power.’

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Left: The engine is a 3.5 EFi with a little extra help from a K&N air filter and Piper mild road cam. That’s not all, though – it’s been fully rebuilt, with all the shells, bearings, rings, lifters, timing chain and so on replaced with OEM quality parts. All cast components were chemically cleaned, too, while the heads were also rebuilt and the timing case was replaced with a new unit.

Further upgrades include a high-capacity oil pump and metal head gaskets Above: The LT77 gearbox has been completely rebuilt with new main, lay and primary shafts. The transfer box, meanwhile, which is what you’re looking at here, has been upgraded to a new chain-driven Borg-Warner unit with a viscous coupling What followed was a lengthy spell back in the worlds of classic restoration and hot-rod building.

But you’re never recovered, only recovering, and so it proved when a temptingly low-mileage Range Rover came up for sale.

‘It’s got 43,600 original miles and three owners including me,’ says Jimmy. ‘It had spent most of its time hanging out in a hay barn, as the original owner did the gearbox output splines by towing a heavy horsebox around in high range.

‘I bought it from a copper in East London. It had the hookiest MOT on it I’d ever seen and I thought it was going to kill me numerous times on the

drive back to Devon. It turned out he’d changed a number of parts like A-frame ball joints and radius arm bushes and had failed to do anything up more than finger tight…’

Time for a chassis-up rebuild, then. Not what you’d expect to be necessary at 43,600 miles, but that’s 35 years of abuse and neglect for you. The chassis itself has never been welded, so having been stripped right down it was shot-blasted and repainted to make it like new.

What you won’t see under the vehicle is a layer of wax. That’s because Jimmy has installed an unusual modification he learned about while

working on boats. A 5mm sacrificial plate is welded to the chassis with two M12 studs to mount a magnesium anode; copper cables run from this to the chassis, body, engine and battery earth terminal. ‘This stops electrolytic action happening where different metals make contact in the vehicle structure,’ he explains. ‘It also stops galvanic reaction happening on electrical contacts, which makes the vehicle’s electrical system reliable.

This is the bet thing you can do to protect an aluminium-bodied vehicle against corrosion.’

The Range Rover’s body was in almost as good a condition, with no more than a bit of minor

Above left: The front axle gained new kingpins and rebuilt swivel housings, seals and bearings. In addition to the steering guard, there’s a bolt-on diff guard to deflect impacts away from the delicate bits. The back axle, meanwhile, was entirely rebuilt in a brand new OME casing Above right: The Rangey’s suspension has been lifted, but not excessively. It’s on +25mm front and +50mm rear light-duty coils, combined with Gaz shock absorbers and Powerflex polyurethane bushes all round. While refurbishing the vehicle, Jimmy removed all the suspension components to be chemically cleaned and repainted prior to going back on Left: Underneath, the bolt-in crossmember beneath the gearbox has been replaced by a tubular military unit

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Chassis corrosion? Here’s the thinking man’s answer…

Every now and again, we come across something the likes of which we’ve not seen before. Not bimetallic corrosion on Land Rovers – we’ve DEFINITELY seen that before – but the use of a galvanic anode to prevent it.

These are common in the maritime industry, and as a way of protecting metal structures designed to be buried under the ground. They work by introducing a third kind of metal into the circuit, which needs to be more ready to give up its electrons than the existing two.

In this case, we have the mild steel of the Range Rover’s chassis and underbody and the aluminium of its panels. Welded to one of the main rails is a 5mm plate with a magnesium anode mounted to it via two M12 studs. Copper cables run from the anode to the chassis, body, engine and battery earth terminal.

‘This stops electrolytic action happening where different metals make contact in the vehicle structure,’ explains Jimmy. ‘It also stops a galvanic reaction from happening on the electrical contacts, which makes the vehicle’s electrical system reliable. This was my own idea – it’s the best thing you can do to protect an aluminium bodied vehicle against corrosion.’

Galvanic anodes are also known as sacrificial anodes, because it’s the material you’ve introduced into the circuit that does the corroding. This does mean they need to be replaced every now and again; the McDuff unit you see in the picture above, which is intended for use on inshore boats, costs about thirty quid to buy and in an application like this can be expected to last long enough between replacements to basically count as free rustproofing.

welding being needed behind the headlights and front inner arches. The panels were all stripped, with the old paint chemically removed, and fully etch-primed before being repainted. The colour, which you’re unlikely to recognise, is Dark Bronze Mist metallic – it’s from the Cadillac palette, and Jimmy chose it because he wanted something more modern that still didn’t look a million miles away from an original Range Rover hue.

Under the bonnet, the 3.5 EFI engine was fully rebuilt with all the cast components chemically cleaned. Jimmy used OEM-quality parts throughout – things like the shells, bearings, rings, lifters and timing chain – and added a Piper mild road cam, metal head gaskets and a K&N air filter to make it go nicely. Which it does – while also making a lovely noise. He describes it as sounding like ‘a baby TVR,’ which might seem to be the wrong way round but, when you consider the racket a Griffith or Tuscan was capable of kicking up, is actually quite accurate. It’s restrained but not muted, rude but not obscene.

This points up the importance of relatively small things in getting the best from an engine.

It’s easier to count up the number of people who’ve not done a K&N, but the metal gaskets are less of a well known way to get more power from your engine. Similarly, Jimmy has installed Sumo steering bars – not because he intends to go off-roading in the sort of conditions that need ultra-strong components here, but because they help give the vehicle more feel on turn-in.

If you’re dismissing this in your mind as a load of old waffle, we drove Jimmy’s vehicle and we can report that you’re wrong. The only Range Rover we’ve ever experienced that handled as sharply as this one was factory-built in the 1980s for a works entry into the Paris-Dakar Rally which, sadly, never came to fruition.

The LT77 gearbox was completely rebuilt, too, and the transfer case was upgraded to the later Borg-Warner chain-drive unit with a viscous coupling. Jimmy says this ‘dramatically improves roadholding and off road ability,’ and that along

Nothing too aggressive here – but it’s not just classic-car road rubber, either. In fact, if you’re of the Boggers-or-bust persuasion you’d be agog at what a proper 4x4 and a skilled driver can achieve on a compromise tyre like the BFGoodrich All-Terrain

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If you’re looking for upgrades, there’s not a lot to see here. The cabin is, simply, very original and in excellent condition. The wood trim on top of the floor console is non-standard, as are the matching turned gear knobs; whether you like them is very much down to personal taste (the original timber on the doors is rather more muted, certainly), but one thing surely nobody’s going to argue with is the sound system, which has been upgraded to one from this side of the millennium

with the sacrificial anode it’s one of the best things he’s done on the vehicle.

Another is the use of castor-correction bushes on the suspension, which went on when the axles, brakes and so on were being built back up. So too did +25mm front and +50mm rear springs, Gaz shocks and a full polyurethane bush kit from Powerflex, giving the Range Rover a subtly tougher stance and tightening up its handling still further.

The result? A Range Rover which still looks acceptably original but is also somehow more modern in its appearance – and dramatically improved in the way it drives. It’s definitely cool, but it’s not a tart’s handbag the way some resto-mods can be, with an interior that’s largely original and none the worse for it. You could use this Rangey as a daily driver, a work truck or a toy, or as all three, and it would be in its element in each case.

And when we say you could do these things with it, that’s not just us speaking hypothetically.

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That’s because Jimmy rebuilds vehicles for more than just the fun of it. He might not be one of those people who make a living by restoring Land Rovers to a formula and putting huge tickets on them, but he does build vehicles to sell – sometimes to customers’ specifications, but mainly because the way he likes them seems to appeal to people who know what they’re looking at. Which means that for £45,000, this robustly rebuilt low-mileage Range Rover could be yours.

A lot of money? Well, for double that you could go to a company with a fancy website and get one with an interior that looks like Lady Gaga’s wardrobe. And paying less is definitely an option, though only if you go somewhere that’s either doing it at a loss or not putting in the sort of work this one’s seen. ‘I’d have made more money working with the slaves in the hand car wash,’ laughs Jimmy. ‘These things are a stupid amount of work and money to make good.’

So when this one has sold, he’ll go back to doing interesting stuff with classic Mercs and Jags, then, will he? Well, yes, in as much as he’ll keep on doing what he does: ‘If you want something building which isn’t gash, I’ll make it,’ could win an award for the pithiest marketing slogan in the history of the car world.

But he’ll also keep on doing what he does in other ways, too. Future plans are almost too many to list, but here’s one: ‘Build a 110 with Dana axles, a Corvette C5 LS1 power plant and Allison air shift box. Much better!’ As we said, you’re never recovered, only recovering. Rivet-counters of the world, watch out…

If you like the look of this Range Rover, or you’ve got a project of your own that you’d like to talk about, Jimmy is on 07522 618509. Just don’t expect him to sell you it for sweeties… or indeed to build you anything, er, gash…

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Every breath Oxygen is Arkonik’s name for the latest wholly manufactured Land Rover 110 to emerge from its facility in Somerset. Combining subtle off-road enhancements with a level of luxury that puts it in a class of its own, it’s another example of what you get at the very top of the Defender market. It’s an heirloom vehicle with a spec to savour – even if its paint colour looks an awful lot better than it sounds…

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Words: Dan Fenn Pics: Arkonik

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e’s out there. Somewhere. Somewhere in the world, nobody knows where. But he’s out there.

Perhaps he’s reading this. Perhaps not. But somewhere, somewhere out there in the world, is the man who thought it would be a good idea to name a paint colour Fungus Green.

Wherever he is, we should all be grateful that when Land Rover needed a name for that brown

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you take

colour Defenders used to come in, he was nowhere nearby. It’s colloquially known as farmyard camouflage, because the stuff that comes out of cows doesn’t show up on it, but a name like Richard the Turd or something really would not have helped it become part of the vehicle’s legend.

Not that being called Fungus Green has prevented the shade you see on this 110 from, well, being on this 110. Which is saying something,

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because it’s one of the most beautiful Defenders ever built.

We can say this with confidence because it’s the latest Land Rover to come out of the Arkonik factory. The Somerset company last appeared in these pages just under a year ago after unveiling a stunning right-hand drive demonstrator which heralded its return to the UK market after several years of concentrating solely on North America;

it operates right at the top end of the restoration game, remanufacturing Defenders from scratch to unique customer specifications and with many improvements over the way Solihull built them first time round.

This latest work of four-wheeled art is called Oxygen. An eight-seat station wagon, it looks splendid in its sparkling green coat – there’s nothing fungal about it at all. There’s a bit of a

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Above: A superlative interior is very much at the heart of every Aronik build. This one features Vintage Thatch brown leather with diamond stitching to the seats, cubby box and door cards, brushed alloy gear knobs and a 15” Evander wood-rimmed steering wheel. There’s a matching brown suede headlining, and the dash is augmented by a Pioneer touch-screen media display with Apple CarPlay and a reversing camera monitor Below: Words like ’rebuilt’ and ‘reconditioned’ hardly touch the sides of what Arkonik does with its engines and gearboxes. For exporting to the USA, these need to be original to the vehicle, so replacing them is not an option. Instead, they’re dismantled back to ground zero and completely remanufactured from scratch

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Above left: KBX supplied its Hi-Force wing-top vents and Signature grille, including headlamp surrounds Above centre: 255/70R18 BFGoodrich KO2 All-Terrains are mounted on 18” Kahn Defend 1983 alloys, providing a very nice blend of subtlety, functionality and outright bling Above right: There are more eye-catching winch bumpers in the world, but on a vehicle like this that’s really not what you need to be going for. A standard bumper with end caps and DRLs looks nice and discreet, and provides the perfect home for a Warn Zeon 12-S rim-before-sidewall sense to its stance, with 255/70R18 BFG All-Terrains mounted on a set of tremendously eye-catching Kahn alloys, and up top a Slimline II roof rack from Front Runner adds an air of functional purpose.

This is enhanced still further by a front bumper carrying DRLs, an A-bar and a Warn Zeon 12-S winch. It looks like it’s ready for business but not as if it’s waiting to start a fight, the way some off-road prepped Defenders can. Along the sills, it’s trimmed in black chequer plate – something that tends to make us shudder, if only because of the number of people who think this somehow qualifies as armour, but when there’s also a set of Fire and Ice side steps looking after them you know the vehicle is in good hands.

Then you look inside, and you see that the vehicle hasn’t just been in good hands. It’s been in the hands of a master. Arkonik is known for the

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quality of its cabins, and for using the very best suppliers to ensure it stays that way – but even by its own heady standards, this one is something special. Vintage Thatch brown leather with a diamond-stitched finish is applied to the seats, cubby box and door cards, creating a sumptuous ambience that’s boosted hugely by a classic 15” wood-rimmed steering wheel. ‘Imitating nature,’ says Arkonik, ‘Oxygen’s interior is a heady mix of natural materials.’

Of course, materials don’t come any more natural than fungus, so there’s a theme running all the way through this 110. Even if the paint isn’t coloured using ACTUAL Fungus, you can still convince yourself that this glorious 110 is a force of nature rather than a man-made masterpiece.

And a masterpiece it is, from the detailing on the V8 engine to the trim in the cabin to the level of finish with which that Fungus Green has been

applied. We’d be very surprised indeed if the guy who named it, whoever he might be, ever thought it would grace a vehicle with such style.

And he’s out there, whoever he is. He’s out there somewhere. And maybe, just maybe, he’s reading this article and smiling to himself – because as it turns out, he was right all along.

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GOLDEN BROWN It’s easy to describe a restored Defender as ‘understated’ when in fact it looks like the inside of a brothel. This 90 certainly stands out in a crowd – but without losing even a shred of its original character. And better still, not only is it cool in a wonderfully vintage way, it’s also mechanically original – and barely run-in…

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Words: Paul Looe Pictures: Harry Hamm

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here are many reasons for buying a Land Rover. Some of them are obvious, like needing a tow truck, an off-roader or something really big and safe for your family. But the big one is just as obvious, though people seldom admit it: you just like them.

Then there are ones like ‘I drove one in the Army’ or ‘I grew up on a farm’, or ‘I like things I can fix with a stick and a lump of rock.’ But Nima Staniewick has one that was new to us.

Nima has had several Land Rovers. But his current 90 is the one that stands out. Not just because, well, it does stand out, full stop, but because of what he likes about it.

‘I thought it an entirely appropriate acquisition for several reasons,’ he says. ‘Immediately the colour distinguished it from any other Land Rover I have seen. I live in Stamford, a Georgian town renowned for its architecture and one built almost entirely from local limestone, so the colour was an instant attraction for me.’

Bikers say you should choose your helmet to go with your bike, not the other way round. And it does stand to reason that you should choose your Land Rover to go with your town, because doing the opposite would be terribly inconvenient.

The 90’s appearance is the result of what Nima calls a ‘fabulous restoration’ by Cool’n’Vintage.

Powered by its original 2.5TD engine, it dates from May 1989 – yet he’s only its fourth owner.

The previous was a stonemason to the Crown (didn’t know crowns were made of stone, did you?) and when Nima went to look at it he found a Land Rover which was ‘well-looked after and without a single oil leak.’ Unusual, you’ll agree. ‘I knew,’ he says, ‘I had found an iconic gem.’

If nothing else, he had found an early 90 with only 50,000 miles on the clock and a professionally Waxoyled chassis. More than that, he had found one whose appearance, inside and out, makes it what he calls ‘one of the most uniquely distinctive and beautiful vintage Land Rovers still on the road.’

The Cool’n’Vintage restoration, which Nima says cost more than £20,000, has a pleasing lightness of touch to it. Many such Landies tend to be restored and modified to the point where they’re no longer recognisable, but this is definitely still a 90 – just a very cute one. The Cappuccino paintwork sees to that, especially as it’s continued down on to the original-issue 16” steel wheels, and then up top there’s the absolute coup de grace.

A 90 Truck-Cab from back then would have left the factory with a white roof, and jolly nice it

would have looked too. But this one is a lot more than just nice. It’s hard to believe we’re talking about mere paint, actually, such is the effect.

‘Adorned with its metallic Roman Bronze roof,’ says Nima, ‘it implies an air of sophistication and takes a stage of its own in the sunlight.’ And he’s right. It looks, to put it simply, gorgeous.

On anything other than a Defender, the fact that this superb looking paintwork is quite well scratched up at the back of the cab would be sacrilege. But this is a working vehicle, even today.

Nima’s line of business is architectural salvage, and at times he has to carry big, long items which need to sit in the pick-up bed and rest on top of the roof. Both areas have scars to show for it, but that’s just as it should be – even a nice ‘un was never made to be coddled. ’I have been a Land Rover enthusiast ever since setting up my architecture practice,’ Nima

Canadian calf-leather seats are the highlight of a cabin which also features full black carpets, oak suede headlining with matching visors and a Kenwood stereo with DAB, Bluetooth, USB inputs and hands-free phone pairing. It’s not trying to be anything it isn’t – just to be what it always was, only much better

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explains. ‘Specialising in landscape architecture, heritage and management, I have been involved in a variety of projects spanning from the Lincolnshire Wolds to the Cotswolds and this has meant many a muddy site visit! And there is only one vehicle capable of tackling such terrain for me.

‘My Land Rovers have always been classic in style. Having moved away from the luxury of Audi some years back, I like the rugged, heritage quality of the 20th Century Defender.

‘My profession is in the conservation and restoration of classical architecture. Timeless pieces of heritage that, with the right restoration or preservation work, pass from generation to generation

to admire and enjoy. The fact this Land Rover is also a result of the same process was perhaps the most important factor in purchasing it.’

The Canadian calf leather seats didn’t exactly put him off, either. These go perfectly with the exterior colour, and they have the same stitching pattern as a traditional Land Rover seat – it must have been tempting for the restorers to get all fancy and go for diamond quilting or something like that, which can work superbly in later, more lavish 90s but would have looked out of place in something with such an understated feel.

Even in a modest Truck-Cab, the seats look like they belong. A full set of black carpets helps

there, as does an oak suede headlining and matching visors from Exmoor Trim. Elsewhere in the cabin, the 90 retains its correct four-spoke pre-Defender steering wheel; rather less of a period piece is the new Kenwood Chromatic HD stereo which means this has got to be one of the only 2.5TDs in the world with DAB, Bluetooth, USB sockets and hands-free phone pairing.

So, you’re not looking at a 90 that’s been preserved in aspic and kept living in the past. Yet nor are you looking at one that’s been dragged kicking and screaming into the modern world. There are enhancements, for sure, but none of them try to make it something it wasn’t.

‘My profession is the conservation and restoration of classical architecture. This Land Rover is also a result of the same process’

This is the pick-up bed of a true working vehicle that regularly carries large items and needs its Goodyear Wranglers to get on and off construction sites. The period cargo box adds a wonderfully fitting touch – it, like the whole vehicle, is a superb calling card for Nima’s architectural salvage business

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So many people would have yielded to temptation and replaced the original 2.5 TD diesel engine with smething more modern when restoring this 90. But with less than 50,000 miles showing at the last MOT, it’s barely run in – and while it’s not known for being as smooth as a Tdi, it’s perfectly suited to the vehicle’s timeless charm

Mainly, the restoration done to this 31-yearold 90 has concentrated on getting it set for the journey towards its half-century. Rust-free and rock-solid underneath, it has a lifetime still ahead of it – especially when you look at the tiny mileage on its clock. Some people would be gung-ho to fetch out an old 2.5TD and replace it with something more modern instead, but as Nima says it ‘never misses a beat and sounds delightful, combining power, performance and all-round economy’ – and of course it’s elegantly simple and easy to maintain.

And most of all, it’s right. Which is a good verdict on the vehicle itself. It’s very cool to look

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at, with an understated chic that’s carried through to the cabin, and is guaranteed to stand out in a car park full of… well, anything. But what makes it so special isn’t just what has been changed, but what has been left alone. This is still a pre-Defender 90, with the same mechanical spec as the day it left Solihull – but it’s so much more besides.

‘She’s a privilege to drive,’ says Nima. ‘Despite being an old girl, she outshines even

the newest of Defenders.’ And when you see it parked, gleaming in the autumn sun and blending in perfectly with the elegant limestone buildings of a Lincolnshire village, you have not one but two examples of English heritage at its best.

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HOME COMFORTS The Discovery 2 is unlikely to be the Land Rover that springs to mind when you think about camping trips. But this hugely modifiedTd5 has been turned into a one-off motorhome – with all mod cons on board and still every bit of the character that made it so appealing in the first place

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Words and pictures: Mike Trott

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and Rovers are made for adventure and there is a whole consortium of tools and accessories you can buy for your vehicle in an attempt to turn your Green Oval machine into a true master of overlanding.

Roof tents in particular have become very popular in recent years and some of the models on offer make camping and those wild stopovers feel very much like home, even if you’re hundreds of miles from your actual place of residence.

There are some vehicles out there, however, that piddle on the idea of makeshift accommodation. Instead, these vehicles have gone through extraordinary lengths to be transformed into a mobile house.

Sit in the driver’s seat of this Disco 2 and as you look out over the bonnet, you’d do well to think you were in anything other than an ordinary Td5 Discovery. But when you glance over your shoulder, you’re greeted with one of the cosiest and most practical interiors you could imagine.

The Disco belongs to Tony and Candy Woods, both of whom enjoy roaming the UK and beyond, all whilst camping along the way. But a few years ago, they were on the hunt for a vehicle that would give them greater comfort than a mere thin layer of canvas drooping above their heads.

‘We wanted an all-wheel-drive camper and happened to see this ad on eBay,’ explains Tony. It was this majorly adapted Discovery they saw be-

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Above left: Up front, the cabin is pretty much standard – that of any run-of-the-mill Discovery 2. Peer behind the curtain separating it from the rest of the vehicle, however, and you’re confronted with a bewildering array of hard and soft furnishings. It’s a thumping great cliche, but this really is a home from home Above right: Said furnishings include this bedroom, located on the first floor of the vehicle above the cab. The memory foam mattress has received rave reviews from the only source that matters, the owner’s wife Left: What do you mean, your car doesn’t have its own cellar under the floor? Surely that’s normal, isn’t it…? ing advertised and the vehicle was being sold down in Swansea.

‘It was built by a John Davies and it caught our attention with the fact it was a Land Rover – Tony has always had a love affair with Land Rovers,’ explains Candy.

Tony and Candy decided to go and view the camper, where John explained how he built it. The process started with some pretty hefty surgery, as the Disco was chopped in half before being stitched back together, only now with two 30” members in place to stretch the chassis and effectively create a Discovery 130.

John applied the usual Land Rover running gear and welded

up a box section to create a space frame. The wiring and plumbing were all taken care of and the interior was transferred over from a written-off Compass caravan.

One of the criteria any prospective vehicle needed to meet was for Tony and Candy to be able to stand up inside the rear of the truck. This Discovery certainly meets their needs, but that might also have something to do with the sheer number of features you’ll find inside.

Besides an actual kitchen sink, this Disco also houses a fridge, freezer, hob, shower, toilet, TV and DVD player. It even has double-glazing.

‘It really is a home from home,’ says Candy.

‘The memory foam beds are gorgeous and so comfy!’ I wonder if the secret cellar located between the chassis rails was the clincher, though…

‘The Land Rover stands at around three and a half tonnes, although most of the weight, like the waste and water tanks, are down below. So it’s not as top-heavy as you might think,’ states Tony.

Candy continues, ‘As soon as we drove off, though, we realised it was underpowered. We were going backwards on the motorway!’

The solution was to install a stage 2 remap and large aluminium intercooler from Alive Tuning, which promptly hiked the Td5’s power output to 185hp, but more importantly 310lb ft of torque on tap from 1800 to 4000rpm.

Above left: The interior was transferred over from an old Compass caravan that had been written off. What’s most amazing is how at home it looks in the back of a Discovery Left: That’ll be time for the old kitchen sink joke, then… In addition, the Disco has a fridge-freezer and four-burner hob, plus a whole lot more besides

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“We travelled to Denmark and Norway in July 2014, just as they had their biggest heatwave for 50 years and we’d packed all our woollies…”

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Perhaps the most impressive figure is that it will still return a respectable 26mpg. And with the military-grade heavy-duty springs on the front and air-assisted suspension running at 20 PSI on the rear, this Disco 2 is one smooth operator.

So, where have Tony and Candy been – so far – in their homely all-inclusive camper?

‘We travelled to Denmark and Norway in July 2014, just as they had their biggest heatwave for 50 years and we’d packed all our woollies,’ laughs Candy. ‘We wanted to see Scandinavia – there are some great roads up there with hardly any traffic, but it’s so incredibly expensive.’

Tony adds, ‘We’ve done a lot of Scotland, the New Forest, Northumberland, the South Coast – from Norfolk to Barmouth, Durness to the Isle of Wight and everywhere in between. We’re definitely going to Scotland this year and want to take the camper to the Outer Hebrides. It’s a place we’ve been a few times, but not with the camper.’

No doubt when they do head north to Scotland, Tony and Candy will find the Discovery to be the perfect vehicle for such an adventure. Not only does it contain everything you could need to make a (mobile) house a home, but the living quarters are also mated to a fine Land Rover, surely making this one of the very best adventure vehicles around.

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adult meccano

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Finding a good Discovery at the right price is the tricky part. But once you’ve done so, you’ll be able to turn it into whatever level of big-boy’s toy you want it to be – and the Mk1’s simplicity means it’s no harder to work on than a Defender of the same age Words: Frank Frogly Pictures: Steve Taylor

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big problem in the world of Defenders now is that since Land Rover stopped making them, they’ve shot up in value.

Defenders were already well on the way to becoming classic cars before production came to an end, but nowadays people have stopped doing off-road builds on them and started turning them back into factory-standard or street-machine spec instead, simply because that’s the way to make the most of their potentially astronomical value.

Where does that leave you if what you want is a simple, traditional Land Rover you can modify, use off-road and enjoy without fear of death by electronics? Mainly, it leaves you either even more skint than ever and constantly wondering when your Defender will become the one that got stolen last night, or jacking in the green oval and crossing over to the dark side instead.

Maybe, though, just maybe, it might leave you looking at the Mk1 Discovery. This was basically a 100” Defender with a different body on it.

There aren’t many around now, and most that do survive are on high mileages, but compared to the Defender very few will have been off-roaded or used for work – and they’ll be priced at between a half and a quarter of what you’d pay for a 90 or 110 in comparable condition.

There is of course the big Disco 1 issue of body rot, and we’re not blind to the fact that most, by now, will be riddled with it. But sound ones do exist – indeed, most still alive today will already have been through the cycle of rot and welding.

And if you plan to do an off-road build on one, if you start by getting it properly, professionally treated under there (something you’d think Land Rover would have thought about back in the day), it should stay solid for many years.

Thus a good, low-mileage Disco 1 could, in theory at least, still be a totally viable alternative to either abandoning Land Rover (which for many of us is still something they can’t bring themselves to do) or bankrupting yourself by sticking with Defenders. The good news is that there’s still a huge aftermarket ready to look after you if you take that route – and if you do, a

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Discovery should still be just as simple and easy to work on.

That’s what Mark Wilson found when he bought a completely standard 1996 five-door with the much-loved 300Tdi engine and the lowest possible level of kit. It was his first 4x4, so he skipped the whole Defender thing – and got straight down to the business of speccing it up with the sort of equipment you now see less and less of on ‘real’ Land Rovers.

The first modification the Discovery received was a Safari Snorkel – and this was also the only thing on the entire truck that Mark didn’t fit himself. At that stage, in his own words, he ‘struggled to tell the difference between a spanner and a screwdriver.’ In the intervening period, however, he’s thrown himself into it with zeal: ‘When you’re buying a car that’s tantamount to adult Meccano,’ he remarks, ‘it’s very much time to learn quickly!’

The same can be said of a hobby that involves paying other people to do the work for you, obviously. Because while that might be fine for everyday repairs and maintenance, hundreds of hours spent bolting on off-road goodies is going to add up to more than your truck is worth.

This is especially the case when you’ve got a bad habit of buying equipment then deciding you want to fit something else instead. Mark told us he had a garage and a loft packed full of bits to

There’s plenty going on with the Disco’s suspension. Mark fitted +2” Britpart springs, using rears all round to compensate for the weight of the front winch, and augmented them with DeCarbon shocks, 2” dropped mounts, dislocation cones and cranked trailing arms. Nothing you’d call pioneering, then, but a combination that works like a charm to let the Disco cover ground smoothly and flex its way beautifully over the terrain

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go on the Disco – some of which he admitted almost certainly never would. Rather than being a carefully executed programme of modifications, it’s been a series of mini-projects on the same vehicle; as well as learning how to do the work as he goes along, that’s also how he learned what work to do.

All the same, there are specific elements of the Discovery’s build that are fundamental to its character. The suspension is foremost among these; Mark and his son Joshua fitted the whole lot in one day, and he quickly found that the system made a massive difference to the vehicle’s off-road performance.

At the heart of the lift are +2” Britpart springs and DeCarbon shocks; Mark decided to fit rear springs all round, which left the front sitting a little high. In addition, the front turrets and rear shock mounts are lowered by 2”, meaning there’s that much more travel available when the suspension drops out.

The kit Mark used included shock mounts, dislocation cones and cranked trailing arms. The whole lot was fitted using Polybushes, and an adjustable panhard rod meant the axle could be kept central. At the front, too, he installed a set of 60-degree castor-corrected radius arms.

Hardly surprisingly, a lift of this magnitude meant steering and transmission mods were in order. The track rod and drag link have been changed to Defender-style solid units, while the former also has armour plate underneath it. The steering damper has been relocated to the front, also a la Defender, while Mark took the need for longer flexi hoses as his cue to fit the braided variety. He covered these in plastic shrouds to help prevent mud from sticking to them.

As for the transmission, that only got modified after announcing that it wasn’t happy about what Mark had been up to. ‘Unfortunately, after we’d fitted the suspension, the front propshaft wouldn’t turn. That was at about half past nine in the morning after we’d worked through to get it ready for an off-road day at Kirton. Subsequently, two wide-yoke props later, the front one a doublecardon, and she drives better than when she came out of the factory. And that’s with the antiroll bars removed.’

One surprise is that with all this suspension, when we met Mark the Discovery was still sporting a set of 235/85R16 Greenway Atacamas.

He had plans, though, involving flared arches,

trimmed panels and 35” rubber… followed in short order by a Td5 transfer box to keep the gearing more or less right.

We mentioned armour a moment ago, and as well as the steering guard Mark fitted North Off-Road rock sliders with integral nerf bars, protection under the fuel tank and chequer plate on the lower doors and bonnet. ‘Exposed roots can’t half do some damage to your panels, so that seemed like a sensible solution. And if I’m lashing down on the roofrack, I can stand on the bonnet and don’t have to struggle to lean over.’

Both bumpers were of the heavy-duty variety, too, with the front one playing home to a Superwinch EPi9 which Mark chose for its topmounted solenoid.

Interestingly, the winch runs a webbing strap: ‘It’s the price of wire with the safety aspect of Plasma. It’s been used in anger a few times, and it did snap once, but the beauty of it is that you can put a couple of granny knots in it and you’re off again. No finesse needed in tying knots on a web strap; it seems to pull itself as tight as you like.’

Up top, the Discovery proudly sports one of the last Expedition Racks made by Safety Devices.

This is actually for a Td5, meaning it overhangs slightly at the back. ‘I prefer that look,’ says Mark. ‘I’ve got it to carry camping gear for family holidays… and because it looks the dog’s!’ Which, as every one of us knows full well, is all the justification you need.

But does it justify running a Disco 1 instead of a Defender? After all, that classic Land Rover

image is a huge part of what makes 90s and 110s so desirable now.

That answer is down to personal taste… but maybe with a small amount of peer pressure thrown in. If you’ve ever seen a line of Defenders on a lane run with a single Disco in the middle of them, after all, it just looks a bit wrong.

But times change, and these days the typical lane run convoy is likely to include a much wider variety of vehicles than it once did. At which point, that lone Disco is unlikely to look so much like a sore thumb any more. In fact, if off-road enthusiasts keep on abandoning Defenders at the current rate, before long you might find that the original Discovery is the closest thing you see to one in recreational off-road circles.

The best of both worlds? Over to you to decide.

But we suspect that having built himself the Discovery you see here, Mark Wilson wasn’t in the least bit bothered about never having started with the ‘real thing’…

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07/11/2021 20:38

DEMOB HAPPY Sponsored by

If you thought ex-military Land Rovers had become a rare breed, try finding one that’s still being used to do what they were built for.

Josh Roberts’ Lightweight is resolutely flying the flag for the offroad world, however – and as if to make it more unusual still, it’s also his daily drive… and it’s still doing it on leaf springs

Words: Paul Looe Pictures: Harry Hamm

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Land Rover Yearbook 09/11/2021 10:42

T

here was a time when old ex-military Land Rovers were a common sight in the off-road scene. With loads and loads of them floating around post-demob, people would snap them up for sweeties to use as cheap green lane toys – then later, once a few years of sound thrashings had taken their toll, they’d go shopping again for a knackered old Range Rover then batter the two together to create a hybrid.

Countless old Series Is, IIs and IIIs ended up this way, as did who knows what percentage of the half-tonne Lightweights that were disposed of by the MOD. These days, any of those vehicles in their original condition would be worth a spectacular amount of money, so they days of cutting them up is very well in the past – now, it’s all about taking old Landies back to standard and treating them like classic cars.

Every now and again, though, you still come across a relic from the leaf-sprung days that’s still being used the way Land Rover intended. Some of these wonderful rarities are even still leaf-sprung, too. And very, very occasionally, they’ll still be working for their living as daily drivers.

Josh Roberts’ early Series III Lightweight is one such vehicle. You could call it a throwback – but you certainly wouldn’t call it a relic. Its chassis and bodywork might be as close to standard as makes no difference, and it is still riding on leaf springs, but this is a heavily modified vehicle which, as well as being Josh’s only car, is also a highly focused off-road machine.

A member of Bonkas4x4Wales, Josh and his Lightweight are regulars on the club’s off-road gigs. ‘I do green laning or pay and plays,’ he says.

‘Or if there’s nothing on, I’ll go and find a good

green lane myself so I can explore and have an adventure.’ Insatiable.

He’s had no shortage of adventures in the workshop, either. Those leaf springs hold the vehicle up on military 109-spec front and standard civvy rear axles; the former comes with 11” drum brakes, which helps deal with the much greater weight now sitting over the top of it.

This in turn comes from a 300Tdi engine, which is the third the vehicle has had in it since coming on to Josh’s radar. It came to him via a member of his family, so he’d been aware of it for a while.

‘When we first had it,’ he says, ‘it was running a 3.5-litre V8 motor from a P6. It was a gas guzzler, so we changed it to a 200Tdi – which only lasted two years before she blew the fourth conrod out the side of the block! Fair play, we still drove it off the side of the mountain on three cylinders.’

The engine is at least the fourth to have taken its place beneath the Lightweight’s bonnet. In addition to the orginal 2.25, it’s had a 3.5-litre V8 from a Rover P6 and a 200Tdi which let go in a big way after a couple of years. This one’s a 300Tdi, which Josh pulled out of a Discovery he’d bought from a mate for £150 then went on to modify, rebuild and modify some more. These days it’s running a turbocharger from an Iveco Eurocargo, a full-width intercooler and, of all things, a side-mounted cherry bomb exhaust. The result? ‘All I can say is sit down and hold on!’

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All the vehicle’s lights have been replaced with LEDs. Josh says this is for ‘practicality,’ which sounds like another way of saying that they actually light things up

Good going, and typical of the stories we continue to hear about the 200Tdi’s in-built robustness. But not what you’d call a long-term solution – hence the 300Tdi that’s in there now.

‘The engine was from a Discovery 1 which I bought off my mate for £150,’ Josh says. ‘I ran it for a year before I got fed up with the lack of power, and then I started work on the engine. I turned up the fuel pump by turning the boost pin and ran it for another year… then I parked the Landy outside my Dad’s house and started a full rebuild.

‘While I was rebuilding the engine, I found the head had cracks in it. So I sourced a new head, which happened to be from Ronicevi (a specialist which makes replacement units with hardened valve seats), and set the timing slightly advanced.’

So far so good, but now it’s time for the good stuff. ‘For a while,’ continues Josh, ‘I had had a turbocharger off an Iveco Eurocargo sat on my bench. And I thought sod it, let’s have some fun…

‘I had custom flanges made to mount it on, but when I put it in place it was touching the chassis.

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So I notched the chassis to accommodate the bigger turbo. I then went for a full-width intercooler and an ally radiator to help keep things cool, then I butchered together a cherry bomb exhaust and mounted that along the side.’

Right about now, you’re either thinking ‘oh yes’ or ‘oh no.’ Plenty of people hit Josh with the latter, but we asked him which of all the modifications he’s made to the Lightweight has worked best and here’s the answer: ‘The turbo. Many people said it wouldn’t work and all I proved them all wrong.

After all the mods, all I can say is sit down and hold on!’

If you were to sit down in this vehicle, you’d be doing so in a leather-trimmed Recaro bucket seat from a Ford Puma. You’d be held in to it by a full four-point harness, too, and in each case that’s a lot better than any Lightweight’s original occupants were treated to. Further safety comes from an old-school four-point roll cage which takes up most of the rear cabin and is stoutly attached to the chassis.

Talking of the chassis, in addition to being notched to accommodate the turbo it’s had new engine mounts welded on (several times over, you’d assume) as well as a set for the LT77 gearbox that’s bolted to the back of it. This is the unit that Land Rover used with the 200Tdi; it’s more agricultural than the R380 that was introduced with the 300Tdi, and has a heavier clutch, but for no-nonsense robustness there’s not a lot to match it. The one Josh used was a short-bellhousing variant taken from a 90, and it turns the props via an LT230 transfer case from a Discovery.

Said propshafts are from a Discovery, too. The one at the front has been lengthened and the one at the rear shortened, all of which Josh did himself. ‘I do all the work and try to keep it all in house,’ he explains. ‘But now and again some jobs take two people so I have to call on friends and family.’

Fair enough. A bit of emotional support might not have gone amiss early on in the project, either, by the sounds of it: ‘When I got it, some of the

09/11/2021 10:42

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ARB are the first to break cover with their accessories for the new Jimny SO WHO HAD ARB in the firstnew-Jimny-mods sweepstake, then? The Australian 4x4 accessories giant has unveiled its Project JBOX demo vehicle, sporting a range of off-road items which, while they are all still prototypes at this point in time, will become available to buy in the near future.

Suzuki’s Australian importer worked with ARB by giving the company’s engineers access to a pre-launch vehicle, allowing them to start work early on developing a range of all-new and adapted accessories. In addition, ARB was able to test-fit existing products to confirm they would work on the new vehicle – and the great news for Jimny fans looking to build a serious off-roader is that these include the legendary Air-Locker.

Among the new products ARB has developed for the Jimny is the smallest ever version of its Summit bull bar. This will come complete with a winch mount, which on Project JBOX has been used to house an 8000lb Warn Magnum.

Underneath the vehicle is a new suspension system. ARB doesn’t quote the size of the lift it gives the Jimny, apart from to say it’s ‘suitable for a set of new muddies and improved off road ability’ – which could of course mean anything. Safe to assume, however, that it’ll be in the usual commercial range, which means it can be expected to be in the region of two inches.

Further metalwork will come in the shape of steel rock sliders and a tubular roof rack. You’d need to be doing pretty extreme stuff with a Jimny to put its sills at risk, especially after lifting its suspension, but for any sort of long-range travel a roof rack would certainly be a must-have way of overcoming the limited luggage space that’s an inevitable consequence of the vehicle’s small size – or putting the little Suzi to work.

With this and the bull bar adorned with LED lighting, some underbody protection bolted on and a gear reduction transfer case mod to take care of the bigger tyres you’ll surely want, ARB is already well on the way to being able to kit out a new generation of super-Jimnys. How long before it all becomes available to buy? We don’t yet know – but it’s surely shorter than the waiting list Are you crazy about Defenders? Dotty about Discos? Does the sight of a classic Series for an actual vehicle. To keep tabs on progress, visit www.arb.com.au.

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45

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Above left: The front axle is a military unit with 11” drum brakes from the long-wheelbase Land Rover 109 of the time. The rear is a standard Series unit, with both running 3.54:1 diffs and braided brake lines. Those tyres are 33x12.50R15 GT Radial Adventuro M/Ts, riding on offset rims to give them some space for movement Above right: Suspension is by parabolic leaf springs all-round, with polybushes to keep their movement in line. Parabolics are famed for the combination they offer of flexibility and ride quality, and Josh is proof of the fact that you can use them on your daily driver without needing weeks of chiropractic work afterwards wiring had burnt through. So I started ripping at it and replacing the wires that were bad… I ended up coming close to pouring petrol on it and walking away, but I stuck to it!’ He’ll be quite pleased about that, we assume…

‘This is the only 4x4 I have ever owned,’ continues Josh, ‘and to be truthful it’s all I need to own.

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I use this truck every day without fail unless it’s broken down. I take it wherever I’m allowed and will keep driving it until I’m old. It’s been through floodwater and deep bogs and also long trips, and it always without fail puts a smile on my face – because it’s a proper Landy and drives like a tank, and that’s what I love about it.’

77 09/11/2021 10:43

Bounty of the County Sponsored by

When Land Rover introduced the Series III County, it’s unlikely that the company really knew where the future craze for lifestyle 4x4s would take it. So this early example is more than just a restored classic: it’s a historical marker and, it so happens, a promotional vehicles Solihull chose to show the world its new direction

Words: Tom Alderney Pictures: Absolute Classic Cars

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Land Rover Yearbook 07/11/2021 21:23

W

ith the new-fangled 90 and 110 well on the way, the early 1980s were a time when leaf-sprung Land Rovers had their final hurrah. Even though more than three decades had passed since the launch of the original Series I, with very little in the way of product changes during much of that time, the last few months before the new models were launched saw two major additions to the Series III range.

Introduced in April 1982, the first of these was the High-Capacity Pick-Up – a utility truck with a larger bed and increased payload compared to the existing 109” pick-up. The HCPU designation was carried over into the 110 era, which arrived the following year, so in a manner of speaking this was a vision of the future.

In that respect, however, the new truck paled into insignificance next to the model that arrived a couple of months later. This was the County Station Wagon – a vehicle whose added creature comforts made it the forerunner of every lifestyle Defender created during the close-on four decades that have passed since.

Available in 88” and 109” guise, the County was launched in the summer of 1982. Like most new models, its arrival was heralded by a press launch, where ten pre-production vehicles were gathered in the grounds of Blenheim Palace for the assembled media to drive on and off-road.

These were also the vehicles that Land Rover used for photography while producing its promotional material for the County. And one of them, an 88” first registered in June 1982, has recently been returned to its former glory following a chassis-up restoration.

Compared to the lavish spec of the Defenders that were to bring the notion of ‘bling’ to Land Rover ownership, the County was a very simple thing.

But with sound deadening, ashtrays, inertia reel seatbelts and cloth-trimmed seats sourced from British Leyland’s commercial vehicle division, it was a step change forward compared to the farmer-spec wagons that had come before it.

The County featured a Safari roof, too, helping to prevent it from becoming like an oven inside when the sun came out. And in addition to exotic equipment like towing eyes, reversing lights, side repeaters and rear mudflaps, it was even treated to some prettying up on the outside. The headlamp bezels gained a silver finish (by the standards of what a Land Rover was in 1982, this is practically SVX-level exoticism) and the bodywork gained full-length County stripes.

It’s easy to mock, of course, but a tidy County was a revelation back then – and still looks extremely handsome today. The launch vehicle

here, fresh from its restoration, is very striking indeed in its Russet Brown paintwork, and as normal with press demo cars it was originally specced with a wide range of optional extras.

The cabin is adorned by a cubby box between the front seats, the 5.50x16 tyres have been upgraded to 205R16s and the drivetrain has been enhanced by an overdrive and, further downstream, freewheeling hubs.

All of this has been retained during the restoration process – which has been done with fastidious attention to detail, all the way down to rivets which follow the original factory lines.

Various panels are brand new, as is the bulkhead, which sits on a chassis that’s been shot-blasted, welded where necessary and then finished in black powder coat. The suspension has also been

When you compare it to the Series trucks that went before, the County must have looked almost freakishly posh when Land Rover first showed it off to the world.

Borrowed from British Leyland’s commercial vehicle division, cloth-trimmed seats with actual headrests were a quantum leap forward, and with actual sound-deadening material now part of the vehicle’s spec for the first time it was possible to have a conversation at fast road speeds. Things like carpeting and roof lining seemed hugely sumptous, too, and the latter contained vents for the Safari roof. These have been fully restored, as has everything else in the vehicle – the seats were stripped to their frames and remade with new foam and covers, and even the gear knobs are fresh out of the box

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The new County specification brought with it a range of previously unimagineable luxuries and styling cues. A Safari roof was one of the most notable additions, and in terms of looks you’d never seen a Landy with silver headlight bezels before. Back then, this was as ground-breaking as the SVX was to become a quarter of a century later redone from scratch, with new springs, shocks, bushes and so on.

Under the bonnet, the engine is one of the last of the five-main-bearing units to come out of Solihull during the decades-long 2.25 era. It’s been reconditioned and is now running a galaxy of new ancillaries – the carburettor, starter motor, alternator, radiator and hoses, fuel tank, filler neck, glass fuel filter bowl and exhaust have all been replaced with new items.

The same is true of the heater box, clutch and clutch master cylinder, as well as any parts found to be less than perfect when the gearbox, transfer case, overdrive, axles and propshafts were stripped down. The entire braking system has been renewed, too, all the way from the master cylinder back, and the original steel wheels have been refurbished and fitted with 205/80R16 Michelin Latitude tyres.

Finally, the Land Rover received an all new electrical system – the wiring loom, fuse box and lights at both ends are all fresh out of the box.

Inside, meanwhile, almost everything has been renewed or thoroughly refurbished. All six seats were stripped to their frames then remade using new foam and covers, and all the switchgear has been refurbished or replaced. The seatbelts, window rubbers, mats, gearknobs and headlining are all new, and galvanised fittings were used throughout. Any glass that needed it was replaced, and the Safari vents were refurbished.

‘The only “original” looking item is the steering wheel,’ says Mark Jennings, whose company Absolute Classic Cars sold the vehicle last spring. ‘And we plan to restore this too ahead of sale – should the new owner wish.’ It could certainly be argued that the part of a Land Rover you spend most time touching is the perfect

candidate for being left in its patinated state, as a sort of link back through the vehicle’s history to its glorious past.

Not that it’s just the way it would have been when new. ‘The panel fit is perfect,’ notes Mark.

‘You’re unlikely to come across another Landy whose doors shut with ease, rather than a slam!’

With less than 500 miles on the clock since restoration, Mark treated the Series III as if it were a new car. Given the work that had been done to it, you can see why.

It was listed at £29,995, which isn’t even all that expensive for a new car, far less a new Land Rover. Unlike anything you’ll get for that money from a shiny dealership, however, if it’s happy new owner keeps it nice it will still be worth that much money ten years from now.

Anyway, though, this Land Rover is more than just a new car. And it’s more than just an old Land

There’s a touch of whimsy about the AA and RAC badges, possibly, but they certainly add a lovely period feel to the classic Series III grille.

Elsewhere, many body panels are brand new, as is the bulkhead, but the chassis has been retained – with the amount of work that went in to restoring it, the cost benefit over a new galvanised unit must have been marginal at best, but the result is a classic Landy still sitting on its original frame, and we all know how much that means

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The engine, a late five-main-bearing job, has been thoroughly refurbished and is now looking as good as the day it was first fitted. The list of ancillary components that have been renewed is fairly staggering – as well as obvious things like the carburettor, alternator and starter motor, the filler neck, fuel filter bowl and exhaust are all fresh out of the box

Rover, too. It’s a perfect example of how beautiful a restored Landy can be – and, unlike any new car at all, it’s an individual vehicle that already has a place of its own in the history books. How many people can pick up a sales brochure and gaze at a picture of the actual vehicle that’s sitting on their

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driveway? That’s just one of the ways in which this Series III is very special indeed.

Many thanks to Mark at Absolute Classic Cars for his help in compiling this article. You’ll find the company at www.absolute-classic-cars.co.uk

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Land Rover Yearbook 09/11/2021 11:01

AGED TO PERFECTION Sponsored by

Most of the Series Is you see these days have been through the cycle of decay and restoration, and now they look as good as new.

This 86” looks even better, however – because it’s been on the road from day one and, having never needed restoration, carries all its war wounds as a perfect example of automotive patina

Words: Tom Alderney Pictures: Alan Kidd

I

n the world of Land Rovers, restoring Series Is has become something of a national obsession. For a dedicated band of professionals, there’s a good living in it; for a small army of equally dedicated enthusiasts, it’s a labour of love; and for Land Rover itself, over the last few years it’s become a way of selling old vehicles for even more than it costs to buy a new one.

The result is that most Series Is still in existence now look startlingly similar to the way they did when they were brand new. They’ve been to hell and back in between times, and as often as not almost nothing on them is original, but they look a million dollars and are capable of changing hands for approximately that much too.

This story is about a Series I, but it’s not one of those back-to-showroom classics. It is, simply, an old truck. Actually, ‘old’ is too harsh a word. Better to describe it as being aged to perfection.

People talk a lot about patina. In the world of classic motors, it’s a word that gets trotted out way too often by chancer-dealers to describe dog-eared old sheds. Scuffed alloys, saggy head lining, sunburnt paint, torn seats and missing bits of trim have all been described as patina. You can probably think of another word to describe people who abuse the term in this way while trying to pass a tatty old stinker off as a modern classic…

Anyway, patina. You know how copper turns green over time when it’s exposed to the elements? That’s patina. The word can also be used for other forms of tarnishing that occur to metal

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through oxidation, giving them a thin top surface which develops with age.

The outer sheen gained by wooden furniture during its life is also referred to as patina. In this case, it’s often compounded by the marks left in its surface by the wear and tear of everyday use.

It’s the same deal when you’re talking about the way leather changes with age, too – which may well be how the word underwent a mild semantic change and started being used to describe the wear marks on classic vehicles.

Which brings us back to this Series I. Something was bound to eventually. Park it in a line-up of restored Land Rovers and at a hundred yards you’d think yep, it’s another restored Land Rover.

But get up close and you see that actually, it’s not.

It has (deep breath) patina.

That’s because this Land Rover has never been restored. It’s been maintained, of course, sometimes in quite a big way, but no-one has ever painted, sanded, ground, shot-blasted or otherwise destroyed the scars, marks and blemishes that tell the story of a life well lived.

Well, a life to date. Having only covered 85,210 miles to date (about 1311 a year), it’s running along just fine, thank you. And of course, it has well and truly made it through the stage in life when Land Rovers tend either to get stripped for parts or (back in the day, obviously) cut up and used for trialling. In other words, it’s here forever.

An 86” with the 2.0-litre spread-bore petrol engine (an early example of the later version of

this engine, if that makes sense), Land Rover chassis number 170602480 was first registered on St George’s Day, 23 April 1956. It was supplied new to the Heidelberg Printing Machine Company in Kington St Michael, near Chippenham. This was an era when Heidelberg’s ‘Windmill’ platen press was in its heyday, being imported to the UK in huge quantities; quite why the company needed a Land Rover is unclear and probably shrouded in the mists of time, but there are some lovely green lanes down in its neck of the woods and who could ever want a better excuse than that?

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Being from 1956, the 86” was among the first Land Rovers fitted with the revised version of the spread-bore 2.0-litre petrol engine. And what you’re looking at here is… that very same engine. Original to the vehicle, it’s been looked after properly and still runs like a dream

Not that there’s much sign of the Series I having been given the sort of trashing that can happen on the lanes. Quite the opposite, actually.

It certainly has been used, but just as certainly it hasn’t been abused.

Nor has it been neglected. In fact, it has been looked after with remarkable care. This issue of The Landy will be published just a couple of days after its 65th birthday – and even after all that time, its original buff logbook is still intact. So too, therefore, is its history, dating all the way back to day one.

‘The great appeal about this Land Rover is that it has never become derelict and abandoned, but has been kept on the road and used for over 64 years,’ says its current owner, Callum Bodger. ‘I love the wear on the paintwork and the minor dents and bruises it has picked up over the years.’

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Callum knows his Series Is, because he runs All Terrain Engineering – a company which, among other things, fettles old Land Rovers and sells them on. This is one such Land Rover, which means you’re now wondering how much they want for it (read on, as they say); it came to them in October last year and what work it needed was completed earlier this year.

It didn’t need much. In the main, Callum removed the hard-top body it was wearing and converted it into a soft-top, using a new canvas hood and sticks. He also went through it mechanically – but while doing so found that in the main, it was just an incredibly well sorted vehicle.

‘The chassis has had repairs over the years,’ he reports. ‘But it’s very sound and these repairs have been done well. The bulkhead has been repaired at some point and then galvanised to

make it future proof. Over the last few years, the carb, distributor, dynamo and starter motor have all been refurbished. It’s had new plugs and leads, a new fuel pump and tank, a new braking system, new suspension and new steering.

‘Along with regular servicing, it all means the car is in great mechanical condition.’

The results are there to be seen, too. We’ve driven several Series Is just recently, and as always each has its own quirks and its own character. But this one was far and away the nicest, with a perky engine, smooth clutch action and light, natural steering. The box goes into gear and stays there. It’s just all-round right. There’s even an overdrive fitted, so you could do a distance in its without being driven out of your mind.

They all shake, and none are quiet except when they’re switched off, but in addition to the above

Land Rover Yearbook 09/11/2021 11:01

‘The great appeal about this Land Rover is that it has never become derelict and abandoned, but has been kept on the road and used for more than 64 years now. I love the wear on the paintwork and the minor dents and bruises it has picked up over the years’

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85 09/11/2021 16:01

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There’s plenty of patina on the inside of the vehicle, too, with a nicely worn cabin that’s all in good order but clearly hasn’t been messed about with down the years. It’s been renewed where you’d want it to be – the windscreen wipers both work, for example, and the upholstery on the seats clearly doesn’t date from when the Prime Minister was Anthony Eden. Covering it all up is a set of brand new hood sticks, which support an also new canvas top from Undercover Covers this 86” is as refined as they come. It’s not like driving the sort of modern car you could get for the same money, but then on the plus side it’s not like driving the sort of modern car you could get for the same money.

It’s enchanting, in a word – as delightful to drive as it is to regard. And it’s really delightful to regard. Back to that patina. The word is sometimes used as a euphemism for ‘beaten to death,’ but this is a truck whose panels are straight.

Worn down to the metal in places, scuffed and pin-pricked in others and wonderfully rivet-up repaired in one place on the nearside front wing,

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but they’ve never been ripped to bits. Dented, yes, scratched and even scarred, but it’s just amazing how straight the vehicle actually is. And the patina looks uniform across the whole of its body, too – which suggests that none of its panels have been replaced, at least certainly not any time recently.

Applied patina is definitely a thing (the sculptor Rodin, he of The Thinker, used to pour urine on his work to encourage it to age), but it would take an unbelievable amount of work and skill to mimic the beautifully natural wear that’s apparent everywhere around this vehicle – even that bulkhead had the odd mark on it, though it’s visibly more modern than the bodywork surrounding it.

It’s so original,’ comments Callum. ‘Astonishingly it still has the original engine in place. It has not been messed with at all – for example it has the correct pork pie lights on the back and origi-

nal Lucas wipers.’ That’s wipers plural, take note – you’re looking at a high-spec Landy here…

Most of all, though, you’re looking at a Land Rover whose charm levels are off the scale. It doesn’t have the freshly restored appearance of a recreated original, because there’s nothing recreated about it. This is the real thing, a Series I that is where it is in life because of life. It’s more than just a historic vehicle – it’s a vehicle that’s a piece of real history. Every scratch, dent and pin-prick, all that worn-off paintwork, it all tells a story – the story of a vehicle that’s been serving its owners faithfully for six and a half decades and has a century firmly in its sights. There’s nothing preserved about it, nothing hidden, nothing covered up. We’ve written about a lot of Land Rovers down the years, and this might be the most achingly real one we’ve ever seen.

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Rescue Room

This ex-military ambulance has served as a mountain rescue vehicle in the Brecon Beacons and an overlander in South America. But most recently it served as that most Land Roverly of things – a restoration project

Sponsored by

Words and pictures: Mike Trott

T

here are some folk out there who will have owned the same Land Rover for multiple decades. Perhaps they bought it in their late teens and have been unable to part with it ever since – a bit like that ‘special’ piece of literature they still keep under their bed.

Whatever method of satisfaction you use, I’m sure a good many of you out there can relate to Mark Laidler. He can’t just stick with the same Land Rover year after year, and can you really blame him?

Imagine if it was a T-shirt, owned since you were 21. Sure, it may be a favourite and you may have had some good times in it, but wouldn’t it be better to change it up every once in a while, if not for yourself then maybe for those in close proximity to you?

We join Mark now as the owner of a late Series IIA Ambulance converted for camping duties. It was built in 1971, and is an ex-military vehicle that first sampled civilian life once registered in 1977.

It’s a Land Rover that has led a colourful life and to decipher what the vehicle has actually been through, you need Mark sat down with a cup of tea. Milk and no sugar for me, ta.

‘This is something I came across last August when, once again, I happened to be on the lookout for a project,’ says Mark with a wry smile.

With his bold Geordie accent, it makes Mark sound ever the naughty teenager, like he knows his love of Land Rovers it’s a bad habit. But do you think he cares?

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What’s this, a 200Tdi engine? The comparitively modern lump went in during a restoration at Black Paw 4x4, along with an LT77 gearbox of the kind it would have been mated to when first installed ‘I saw the Land Rover on eBay and made a daft offer for it – lo and behold the guy accepted it!’ says Mark. ‘Since I’ve owned it, the plan was to get it back into a more roadworthy condition and get it through its MOT.’ Mark has managed just that, but before we run you through how he’s left his, errr, mark, there is some background info you should know.

This Land Rover has been put to useful service at some point in its life. Indeed, I can reveal that the vehicle was a former St John Ambulance machine, used in particular for mountain rescue operations.

Don’t be fooled by the RAF touches, they stem from Mark’s own personal affiliation with the military, where for a number of years he served as a driver for the Royal Air Force.

So it’s a Land Rover that favours hills rather than plains (and planes), but then so do most of Solihull’s exports. Based on information that Mark has been able to dig up, it would appear that the ambulance was used in the Brecon Beacons, although for the Land Rover itself that’s like me and you walking to the end of our street.

In another stage of its life, a company called The Overlanders owned Mark’s Series machine.

Now you won’t stuggle to guess what they used the Land Rover for – but you might find it incredible that in its time, this old Land Rover has travelled to and explored the wondeful continent of South America.

Safe to say that this old Land Rover isn’t frightened of a challenge. And safe to say, neither is Mark.

‘I did indeed get my first Land Rover in my teens,’ explains Mark. ‘It was a Series II, I didn’t know a lot about them and it really was quite rotten.’ It needed a fair amount of work – but hey, there’s no better way to learn. And with the extensive list of Land Rovers Mark has owned since, it would suggest he’s now well acquainted with their traits.

‘Series vehicles, Lightweights, ambulances – I’ve had a load of them over the years. They are all getting harder to find now, but I like the military vehicles, they are actually cheaper to insure and more desirable with people when you come to move them on,’ adds Mark.

‘That’s what I do. I buy a Land Rover to do it up, run it for a year or so and then sell it on and get another.’

‘I like the military vehicles – they are actually cheaper to insure, and more desirable with people when you come to move them on’

The back of this Series IIA would have looked very different in any of the various phases of its life. It wouldn’t have been as comfy looking when it was an ambulance or mountain rescue vehicle, and there’d have been a lot more in it when it was on expedition. Nowadays, life as a camper almost sounds like a form of semi-retirement

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It would be easy to assume that the vehicle originally served with the RAF. But although it is indeed an old military truck, it was an ambulance rather than a mountain rescue vehicle – it didn’t become one of those until later. As for the RAF identity, that was just a whimsical touch Mark decided to add for fun as he used to be an airman himself

Prior to reaching Mark, this vehicle had been put through a renovation while with classic Land Rover specialist Black Paw 4x4. While in the workshop, the ambulance had its engine swapped for a 200Tdi with an LT77 five-speed gearbox.

In the rear, the previous set-up as used by The Overlanders had been ripped out and replaced with a fresh canvas for someone to start from scratch with. Mark, wishing to use it on the odd camping excursion with his boys, decided to add a basic sleeping arrangement, enough for three, with a 240v hook-up cable and a wealth of storage compartments.

‘When it came to me it needed generally checking over, so I gave it a good service, changed the fuel lines and brake pads and also

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changed the transfer box to a Discovery unit, too, which gives high ratios for better cruising,’ continues Mark.

The Land Rover got through its MOT like it was charging over the Beacons to rescue a stranded soul and it has now got the basis to be a great little holiday truck. For Mark, his next project is already waiting: an RAF Crash Ambulance.

‘For me, with my connection to the RAF, it holds more of a sentiment,’ smiles Mark. With his next 12 months already planned, the RAF Land Rover will be keeping him on his toes doing its best to satisfy his fettling desires.

Who knows how long it will last – but don’t be surprised if Mark eventually starts to look elsewhere for his sat-is-fac-tion.

123 07/11/2021 20:47

Plan B Sponsored by

With early Classics still holding their value high above the reach of mortal budgets, what should a Range Rover enthusiast turn to if they still have an urge to collect such machines?

Words and pictures: Mike Trott

W

e’ve all been there. No, I’m not talking about when you wake up in the morning after the night before and need to check back through 728 messages in your WhatsApp group to reveal the extent of your crimes.

What I’m referring to is the Range Rover Classic and the fact that every one of us will have stood, stared and yearned for one at some point in our lives. How can you not like such a machine?

They epitomise automotive luxury, and with the Classic being so understated and unostentatious compared with the 21st Century successors, there’s something about the Mk1 Range Rover that very quickly gets you onside.

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Early ones in particular are very charming – especially models with the vinyl seats and still work-friendly interiors. But to buy one in good condition today would place you in a highly exclusive club.

It’s exclusive because you need to have rather a lot of money and when pristine examples are being sold as far north as £100k, it’s not long before you have to consider illegal methods of obtaining the required finances.

Paul Atkinson, who owns the Range Rover specialist firm Atkinson Bespoke Engineering, is just like me and you. He too has found the Classic Range Rovers to possess astronomically high price tags, so to quash the urge for collecting

these most luxurious of Green Oval machines, Paul has turned to his Plan B. ‘I always wanted a YVB two-door Range Rover, but they cost too much money these days. So I thought, “What would be the next best thing?” and decided on collecting P38s and the various editions. And the 30th is the first of my collecting spree,’ reveals Paul.

Specifically, Paul’s Range Rover is a 30th Anniversary limited edition version of the P38, with just 100 being made for the UK market during the year 2000. The model was produced to pay homage to 30 years of the brand’s luxury trendsetter, and all models were lavishly equipped and a joy to behold.

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‘They were all finished in the same colour and trim,’ explains Paul, ‘but where the difference lies is that 50 of those 100 came with the picnic tables and the built-in TV screens. Mine is one of the 50 to have both.’

The bodywork was finished in Wimbledon Green, which was actually one of the colours extracted from the 1996 Autobiography options, while the interior was equally as delightful with its green leather upholstery and liberal use of burr wood veneer. On the rear, the discreet 30th Anniversary badging is highlighted in a pearl effect to signify the 30 years of Range Rover.

‘I’ve had the car for five years and a friend owned it previously to me. It used to belong to the chap at a nearby garage and he kept it for a bit after asking me which Range Rover he should get out of all the options,’ recalls Paul.

‘I told him, “If you’re going to get one, you may as well make it a limited edition one.” I used to walk past it nearly every weekend, and eventually I took it off his hands.’

When the P38 came to Paul, although in a generally tidy condition, there were a few issues that needed addressing. The steering wheel was badly damaged, for example, and typically the headlining had gone, so Paul put in some hours and sorted out the issues one by one, finishing with a thorough service.

‘It runs beautifully, even with 144,000 miles on the clock, and you wouldn’t question anyone if they said it had done half that distance,’ continues Paul. ‘It’s living proof that it doesn’t matter how many miles it’s done, if you look after your vehicles they can still run as sweet as the first day they were made.’

It may not be the coveted early two-door, but the Mk2 Range Rover is the only version other than the Classic to date from the 20th Century.

It’s very much a part of the old-school Green Oval gang and in this fabulous 30th Anniversary spec, few would argue there have been many better Range Rovers ever produced.

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07/11/2021 20:56

Cross Words Sponsored by

You know that thing they say about how the only two things you can be sure of in life are death and taxes? Well, if you own a Defender you can add a rusty rear crossmber to the list. Here’s what it takes to fit a replacement the proper way

OUR DEFENDER 90 TD5 has been clogging up the work car park for four years now. During that time, we’ve changed our ideas on what to actually do with the thing more frequently than Donald Trump has changed press officers. We started off thinking about turning it into a

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NAS 90 lookalike, then started coming to the conclusion than going back to standard would be the most sensible thing, then got back into the NAS idea again. All the while, the 90 was telling us that really, the only thing it wanted was a new rear crossmember.

It made this clear by throwing its toys out of the pram (or dropping one of its mudflaps on the ground) on a mid-Welsh green lane. Turning round after closing a gate after it, we noticed a bolt had come free. By the time we reached the next gate, at the end of the lane, the mudflap was hanging down so flimsily we were able to pull it free with no more than a sharp tug.

So, work to be done, then. And while we still haven’t figured out whether to take it back to standard or create a NAS 90 homage, or some other sort of look-at-me wagon, clearly step one was going to be to strip away all the off-road kit that was on the 90 when we bought it.

We looked at that back in May, shortly after the 90 had paid a visit to the Britpart workshop for three

days of intensive spanner action.

And it’s Britpart that looked after the rear crossmember, too, by supplying and fitting one of the many replacement units in their range. These include half and quarter-chassis as well as entire galvanised jobs, should it come to that, but on ours just the crossmember itself would be enough to do the trick.

This is a job of many parts, so we’ve knocked it down into two for the purposes of keeping it sensible.

This month, we’re looking at the strip-down process, where all the bits and pieces surrounding the crossmember come away to let you grind it off safely. There’s a remarkable among of prep involved before the cutting and welding can start – so instead of trying to cram it all in to one article and skimp over

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1: Here’s a sight to make your stomach turn. Unless you like rust, obviously. The first sign that the rear crossmember was on the way out came when the driver’s side mudflap fell off on a Welsh green lane, and a subsequent MOT test confirmed that it was not long for this world 2-3: You wouldn’t believe how much of a fight the towbar put up before finally accepting that it was going to need to come off. Even with all the bolts undone, it still felt as if it would be able to pull a three and a half tonne trailer without coming loose 4: And here’s why. The drop plate assembly was just fantastically cruddy – the answer was a lot of WD40, followed by a lot of patience, then finally a lot of violence 5: And why do rear crossmembers rust so badly? Well, the amount of dried mud that emerged from underneath the back of the 90 might point towards some sort of clue… This was necessary just to expose the crusted-up fixings that were going to need a sea of WD40 on them

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6: With so little room to work in between the floor and the fuel tank, you need every inch you can get (a common problem, etc). Which means removing everything that’s sitting in the back of the vehicle – in this case, a high-lift, sledgie, miltary-style ground anchor, trolley jack, and two boxes of assorted tools and recovery gear, which between it would be more than enough to weigh down the floor 7: Having given the WD40 a couple of hours to do its work, the bolts holding the drop plate in place are finally ready to admit defeat. Even then, it took a lot of force 8: Off come the wheels to leave more room for access – something which, it will become apparent before much more time has passed, is pivotal to this job 9: Now the vehicle’s body is supported before the big stuff starts to come free 10: You’re going to be draining off the fuel tank before getting stuck in to the next part of the job. Our 90 is a little unusual in this respect as it has an auxiliary tank – it feeds in via the hose you see here, teed into the main filler neck

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11: With the main filler hose loosened off, you can pump out the fuel. Having a collection of jerries to hand is a good idea – for one thing, fuel makes a tremendous mess when you lob it all over the floor, and for another you want to be able to pump it back in again afterwards 12: It’s odds-on you didn’t think about needing to remove the rear seatbelt anchors. Obviously this won’t be a problem in some Defenders, but ours is an XS Station Wagon so rear seats, and therefore belts, are very much part of it 13: Next to be dropped off is the exhaust, which is left resting on the back axle 14: It’s only once the clutter surrounding it has been removed that the actual state of the crossmember becomes apparent. Incredibly, this was only deemed worthy of an advisory last time the 90 went through the MOT

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15-20: Undoing the fuel tank and guard is unlikely to be as easy as it would have been if corrosion weren’t a thing. Your main obstacle, however, is likely to be the sheer lack of space you have to work in. Note the packing piece placed between the chassis and body to help allow the guard to pop out from under the crossmember (pointed out in picture 20) – it doesn’t look like much, but every fraction of an inch is precious here. And that’ll be why we had to empty all the heavy stuff out of the back of the vehicle earlier on…

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the bits that might matter, we’re going to let the pictures do the talking.

Obviously, the first step when you’re working on a vehicle that gets used a lot off-road is going to be to deal with the effects of mud. This will mean knocking shovelfuls of the stuff out of every nook and cranny, for starters – then spraying WD40 over all the hardware you’re going to need to release. It’s not going to be pretty.

Also not pretty is the extraordinary lack of space available between the top of the fuel tank

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and the underside of the rear floor. The former needs to be dropped free as there’ll be welding going on so close to it – Britpart’s guys asked us to turn up with no more than a quarter of a tank, but it still took three jerry cans to hold the diesel they pumped out.

As it turned out, even just removing the steel guard beneath the fuel tank was an absolute pig of a job. The notion of simply undoing the bolts then lifting it clear is an appealing one, but it’s also right up there with the notion of answering

Land Rover Yearbook 07/11/2021 20:53

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21: Like a wrong’un after a long stretch, the tank guard can finally celebrate its freedom and get down to cleaning up its life 22: And with that, the tank itself can finally come free. Bit by bit – this looks promising, but there’s still a long way to go…

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23, 24: This, for example, is a sod of a job but one that’ll save you a lot of heartache later. You’re working blind, but reach up above the tank with your phone and take a photo of the fuel line connections on top of it. They’re colour-coded, so this way you’ll know what’s what when the time comes to reconnect them

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25: Support the tank on a stand while freeing it off – the fuel lines are still connected at this point, and even if they weren’t you wouldn’t want it simply crashing down on to the ground, would you?

26: Now you can undo the fuel hoses – the colour coding is seen here, though if your Defender is like ours you might need to do a fair bit of rubbing before you find it beneath the dried-on dirt 27: Once disconncted, the hose ends need to be masked off using a very specialised and high-tech custom drip-stopper

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28: This is what the connections on top of the tank look like. Or, to put it another way, this is what the top of a very mud-battered fuel tank looks like – the fact that the connector block is so untouched by grot says a lot for the way it’s protected

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29: Definitely not untouched by grot is the crossmember itself, which of course is why you’re been doing all this hard work. The section you see here was strong enough to prevent the vehicle scoring anything worse than an advisory at the last MOT… 30: …but it was very much only a matter of time before the end of it at the driver’s side copped a big fat fail 31: Off comes the nearside mudflap. Ironic that a pry bar was necessary to free it, when you consider that all the other one needed was half a mile on a green lane in Powys

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32-35: Above: ‘Measure twice, cut once’ is every woodworker’s motto. Your Land Rover is not made of wood (hopefully), but it definitely applies when you’re sizing up where to cut the chassis rails, too – get this one wrong and your only consolation is going to be that after all the poverty, self-hate and endless hours of work you’ve got coming up, your Landy will finally have that galvanised chassis you knew you’d have to spring for one day

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that email from a businessman in Nigeria and becoming a millionaire overnight. Expect a fight.

The tank itself is likely to want a good bit of wrestling, too. But far and away the biggest headache you can give yourself here is by pulling the fuel lines off the connector block on top of the tank without giving yourself a trail of crumbs to follow when putting them back on.

Which one goes where? They’re colour coded, if you can see through all the crud, so it’s time to

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36-37: With the conduit for the wires to the rear lights held out of the way by an arrangement of cable ties that would do Wallace and Gromit proud, it’s time to break out first the grinder and then the power hacksaw to cut through the chassis rails. Did you read that previous caption about the ‘measure once, cut twice’ thing? And how many times have you measured by this stage? It’s still not enough, check again… get out your smartphone. No, there’s not an app for the job. You’re going to reach above the tank and take a picture of the block so you know what the connections should look like when it all goes back together.

Once again, we can’t exaggerate the painful lack of space in which you’re working here. It would have been much easier if we’d done this as part of a full stripdown involving the bodywork coming off, because without the floor in the way

you’d be able to see and feel your way around much more easily.

Up to here, anyway, the job has mainly required patience, brute strength and the ability to use a spanner. Now is when you need a proper skill, as the new crossmember has to be welded on, but first there’s more patience required. Patience and a grinder.

Before you make sparks fly, however, the absolutely critical thing is to measure up. Then to check the measurements you’ve just taken. Then you want to check them again, go away and have a cup of tea and when you come back, check them again. ‘Measure twice, cut once,’ is a favourite old woodworkers’ saying, and all they’re going to wreck if they get it wrong is a piece of wood. You’re dealing with your chassis.

Even once you’re sure of this, you still want to let care be your watchword. There’s going to be a lot of sparks flying about, and no end of heat once the welding begins, so look around for anything vulnerable and take time to move it out of the way.

The conduit for the wires to the rear lights works a lot better in its non-melted state, for example.

As these pictures show, so long as you can weld competently there’s nothing in the job to be scared of.

Apart possibly from when the old crossmember comes off and you see what’s inside your chassis…

Land Rover Yearbook 07/11/2021 20:54

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38-40: Potential source of rusted-out rear crossmember? No we can’t think of anything either… The old and new units are seen here, plus what came out of the chassis when the former was lopped off. The word ‘ahem’ comes to mind…

41-42: The crossmember is lifted into position then clamped in place and supported in preparation for welding

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43-44: The corners on the new crossmember are ground off and its tabs are hammered flush to the existing main rails 45-46: After this, it’s ready to be welded to the back of the main chassis rails

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47: With the new crossmember in place, the welds are easy to identify…

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49-52: Now it’s time for everything that was removed to be refitted. First, the fuel tank is lifted back into place, then the guard is wrestled into position underneath it and bolted up 53: Next, the seat belt brackets are refitted 54-56: The fuel hose is reassembled back on to the vehicle and the jubilee clips tightened to secure it. After this, some more wrestling gets the exhaust back into place 57: You know you’re getting close to the end when the roadwheels go back on. The final piece in the jigsaw is for the fuel that was pumped out into a collection of jerry cans to be pumped back in to the vehicle’s tank

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W W W. T I M F RY L A N D R OV E R S . C O. U K parts@timfrylandrovers.co.uk | service@timfrylandrovers.co.uk | sales@timfrylandrovers.co.uk | salvage@timfrylandrovers.co.uk

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Steel, black, powder coated • Fits all pre2000 Defenders • Direct replacement for poor plastic original • Deluxe version available to complement your Raptor Console, complete with silver or black Bezel • Fits directly to your existing plastic Binnacle Mount or for a bullet proof set up we highly recommend the Raptor Steel Binnacle Mount

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Rearguard action If you’re fitting a Discovery 2 with a heavy-duty front bumper, it makes sense to do the same at the back too. This is a slightly less common modification, simply because front bumpers are often added as a place to put a winch, but the one at the back is easier and cheaper to replace – and it tidies up the vehicle a treat

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IF YOU’RE DOING A ‘JUST ENOUGH’ BUILD on a cheap Land Rover you plan to use as a playday toy or lane wagon, chances are you’ll base it on a Discovery 2.

These are among the last remaining beam-axled Landies left in plentiful supply that don’t cost an arm and a leg to buy – it’s either one of these or a P38 Range Rover, and while the latter might actually give you more for your cash it will, very famously indeed, start taking it back the moment you start running the thing.

Not that the Disco 2 is immune to going expensively wrong. But it’s still a real Land Rover at heart, and prices for decent ones still haven’t started going up the way they have for more or less everything else with a proper chassis and axles designed to follow the ground.

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That’s why they’re becoming the go-to Land Rover for playday fun.

Which brings us back to those justenough builds. If you’re speccing up a Disco 2 along those lines, some sort of winch mount is likely to be on your radar – which, practically, means a heavy-duty front bumper.

Chances are, though, that you’ll leave it standard at the back, letting the factory bumper take the knocks and making do with the almost-always-present 50mm towball as a recovery point.

Fair enough if that’s all you want to make of it. But we’re big fans of doing a proper job – which, for all the right reasons, means fitting a rear bumper too. Which, if your already doing the front, shouldn’t be any problem, because it’s a much easier job.

Fitting a Disco 2 with a front bumper is a job requiring patience rather than any great level of advanced skill. But there’s an awful lot of trim to mess around with as part of the job, as well as bits of wiring to replace and a washer bottle that wants to make your life as awkward as possible.

The back ought to be much more straightforward. It’s close to being a bolt-on replacement – though of course what this in turn means is that it will need to start with lots of penetrating oil. If the bolts holding the original plastic bumper in place are anything other than hell to remove, you should probably have a bash at the lottery while you’re on a lucky streak. If at all possible, spray on the oil a day or more in advance to let it work its magic.

When it comes to detaching things, start with the wiring harness for the lower rear lights and, if fitted, the loom for the tow pack.

With that done, you can unbolt the bumper shell and drop it to the floor – gently, though, because now you’re going to take the tail lights out of it and transfer them to your new heavy-duty unit. The one in the pictures is from Extreme 4x4, and a proper bit of kit it is too.

The new bumper fits on to the vehicle using exactly the same mounts and fixings as the one you’re taking off. So, in true Haynes manual style, refitting really is a reverse of removal. Having bolted it up, connect and secure the wiring looms, and you’re ready to test the lights and trailer socket before pronouncing the job done.

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1: A liberal spray of WD40 or similar is never a bad idea before you start trying to free off bolts that have spent years holding bits of Land Rover together. Do this a day or two in advance and the oil will have plenty of time to penetrate as well as it possibly can. In the meantime, you can prep the area by disconnecting the loom from the lights and drawing it back out of the way 2: This particular Discovery 2 turned out to have a hidden story to tell involving a rear-end shunt. The bumper shell was about four years younger than the rest of the vehicle, and the wiring loom had been secured to it using cable ties. In this picture, the brackets on the outside of the main chassis rail can be seen – the bumper is fixed to these 3: Here you can see where the loom has been threaded through the stiffening ribs of the plastic bumper shell and cable-tied into place 4: The Extreme 4x4 back bumper is designed to use the tail lights harvested from the old Land Rover unit. These slot into a pair of recesses, one of which is seen here from what will become the rear crossmember’s point of view 5: This is the same recess you saw in the previous picture, seen from above on the ‘outside’ of the vehicle. Note the eye for a high-lift jack to the left of where the tail light will go 6: With the old shell removed, it can be seen that despite there only being one bolt per side holding the shell on to the chassis brackets, Land Rover provided holes for two per side. It only fitted captive nuts to one on each side, though. The legacy of a design change? Now exiting anorak mode…

7: Here’s the clearest evidence yet that the Disco had been tail-ended. The later stores label on the plastic bumper was enough of a giveaway, obviously, but as you can see here one of the mounts had been slightly distorted 8: Replacing the old drop plate (aka ‘ground anchor’) is this demountable hitch supplied by Extreme 4x4 to go with its bumper. With the towball removed, as seen here, any effect on the vehicle’s departure angle is minimal 9: This is the inside of the original tail light units prior to being refitted. If you’re going to be using your Disco 2 offroad (and if you’re not, why are you fitting a bumper like this?), it’s a good idea to bolster their seals with tape. Tail lights are pretty vulnerable things when you’re spanking it through mud and water – obviously, Land Rover designed the vehicle to cope, but it also designed the vehicle to Not Leak so you can’t be too careful

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ENCHANTING ETHIOPIA If you believe what the guide books say, you might not fancy the sound of Ethiopia. But

Sponsored by

Words and pictures: Raymond and Nereide Greaves

E

thiopia always seems to be a highlight of any overland traveller’s tales from Africa. So we were looking forward to the country with great anticipation as we approached it after a nonetoo-enjoyable spell in Khartoum

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followed by a featureless transit through south-eastern Sudan.

Things started well at the border.

Immigration was situated in a mud hut painted in cheerful colours, which felt unusually relaxed for a place of office – and the landscape changed, too, as the unrelenting

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this mountainous land welcomes overland travellers with plenty of surprises

The interior of Debre Birhan Selassie church is a sight to behold, with the story of Christianity depicted using a traditional Ethopian style of painting. The bright colours may look cartoon-like to western eyes, but in many ways this is Africa’s equivalent to the roof of the Sistine Chapel

flatness of Sudan gave way to the towering Ethiopian Highlands.

To our amazement, there were lush green trees lining the roads, verdant fields of grass and hilly arable land. In places, Ethiopia looked rather like Tuscany – the only difference being the African women

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walking by the roadside carrying loads on their heads.

Something else we noticed about Ethiopia was its tidiness. There is virtually no litter along the roadside, neat stone walls mark property boundaries and larger towns have kerbs and road drainage. All of this

is utterly extraordinary compared to everything else we saw in Africa.

Driving standards are some of the best we saw throughout our expedition from London to Cape Town, too, and the food was a welcome improvement over what we’d found in Sudan.

We did meet very variable road conditions, though. From the border to Gonder and down to Addis Ababa, via Bahir Dar, it’s virtually all good tarmac. Off this main route, however, standards quickly plummet to decent gravel or, more likely, lots of big, sharp stones looking to claim their next puncture.

Not that that was going to stop us. Our L322 Range Rover had made it this far unperturbed, despite being what we believe to be the first of its kind ever to attempt the journey, and our confidence in its ability was growing all the time.

Gonder was our first destination in Ethiopia – and it’s an easy place to like, full of vibrantly coloured houses and outdoor cafes serving chilled beer. Contrary to the notes in our guide book about children constantly hassling you for money, we found everyone here to be easy going and helpful. Our room in the Goha Hotel had a real boutique feel to it, too – and the dining room was also a welcome sight after some dreadful meals on the road!

There are many attractions here, including Fasil Ghebbi, also known as the Royal Enclosure – a cluster of six castles, in varying states of disrepair, right in the middle of town.

Established around 1640, it was heavily influenced by Portuguese Jesuits and feels bizarrely European.

Also quite bizarre, but fascinating at the same time, is Debre Birhan Selassie church. Built in the 1960s, it’s nothing special from the outside, but the paintings on the walls and ceilings are very vivid indeed.

Traditional Ethiopian drawings are close to cartoon images in many respects – people with big heads, huge bulging eyes and comical gestures all in garish colours depicting the story of Christianity.

Then there’s the Simien Mountains, sixty miles or so north of Gonder. This is one of Africa’s largest mountain ranges, with 4200-metre peaks, steep gorges and troupes of Gelada baboons, and its dramatic vistas make it a major tourist pull on the overland trail. A definite must-do.

We set off early in order to collect fuel and food en route, only to find that all five fuel stations in town had run dry. Locals offered us some ‘black market’ diesel, which we weren’t about to risk in a modern engine, then an audacious manoeuvre to try and slide in behind

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Situated right in the middle of Gonder, Fasil Ghebbi is an enclosure containing six castles. Established around 1640, its architecture was heavily influenced by Portuguese Jesuits – meaning it feels bizarrely European a truck we could see filling up resulted in us having a bump with another car.

It sounded bad, but incredibly only a rear light lens on the other car was damaged. Even more incredibly (we were still feeling pretty cynical about the world after Egypt), the driver was really reasonable and, when we offered some cash as compensation, only wanted a fair price for a new part!

We finally happened upon a fuel station with a queue outside, which could only mean one thing. We joined the back and after a while, a diesel tanker pulled in. After half an hour, we were second in the queue… when a power cut struck and the fuel pumps stopped!

In Europe, this is the point at which our tempers would have boiled over and we started shouting.

But this is Africa, and there’s just no point in getting stressed… so we started laughing instead, and that was much better.

Finally fuelled up, we set off.

The tarred road disappeared immediately and was replaced with a gravel track, which in turn deteriorated into an off-road nightmare with awful corrugations and large, sharp rocks everywhere.

Averaging less than 15mph, no way were we going to make it to base camp in daylight.

We had already found that driving at night in Africa is a definite death wish. Many drivers believe that putting their headlights on will drain their car’s battery, so they do without, while animals and people cross the roads randomly. So we decided it would be best to give up and return to Gonder.

Happily, we had at least gone far enough along the road to get some first glimpses of the Simiens – and the views were incredible. The stunning rolling landscape on one side, blending into the jagged outline of the mountains further away, was just fabulous.

We stopped to walk along to a viewpoint and from nowhere, a handful of curious children dashed up over the rocks to join us. We quickly realised that they were not looking for handouts or money and were genuinely fascinated by the two of us, following everywhere we went with reverential hushed discussions going on as though we were being observed carefully.

We took a few photos with digital cameras and played back the images to the children. It seemed as though none of them had ever seen a camera, or an image of

themselves – judging from their hysterical reactions, they could not believe their eyes. They gathered round us in a tight circle laughing and pointing each other out on the camera screen. We laughed along with them, too – such a wonderfully innocent encounter was all the consolation we needed for not having made it to the Simiens as we’d hoped.

We stayed another night in Gonder and then travelled south towards Bahir Dar, marvelling at the scenery en route: lofty volcanic rock formations, wide open plains,

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There are many abandoned tanks littering the Ethiopian countryside, a grim reminder of the civil war that racked the country for many years. A more surprising and much more pleasant sight was a British-registered Series IIA coming the other way… steep hills, gorges and stepped fields. We crossed the source of the Blue Nile at Lake Tana just before entering Bahir Dar itself – which is a very relaxed, civilised and pretty town with tree-lined streets and cafes selling coffee, cake and fresh fruit juice.

Not so civilised is the practice of inflating prices for faranji (‘white man’). We had been hoping to take a papyrus boat ride, for which the local price is 10 Birr (about 50p), but the boatman wanted ten times as much for a two-minute voyage across to the opposite shore.

The boats looked like hysterical fun; essentially floating reed mats with space for three people and a few bags being punted over the top of the lake’s crocodiles. It would

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have made a good video but, even though it was still not a big sum of cash, we were not happy about being fleeced. Bartering doesn’t happen in Ethiopia, either, the result being that everyone loses.

Nonetheless, we liked Bahir Dar and stayed one or two days longer than planned to chill out and enjoy the relaxed atmosphere. We even managed to find somewhere nice for a Valentine’s Day dinner – we certainly never expected to find facilities such as this in Ethiopia!

Moving from Bahir Dar towards Addis Ababa, we stopped at Lake Zengena. Formed in a volcanic crater and shaded by the vast cypress forests which surround it, this turned out to be a beautifully quiet, scenic picnic spot. Normally

you could not even contemplate doing something like this in Ethiopia, as you would immediately be surrounded by onlookers and insistent children, so we really appreciated the tranquillity of the area. We were also lucky enough to see a few Colobus Monkeys dashing around in the treetops.

To reach Addis, we had to pass through the Blue Nile gorge. This is comparable in scale to the Grand Canyon, and the road trip through it is awesome. The scenery is spectacular, and so is the road engineering. The whole 20-mile route in and out was gravel-surfaced until shortly before our visit, but it has now been upgraded to tarmac and furnished with a new bridge over the Nile itself.

From the north, you start the descent from 2600 metres and twist and turn your way down into the gorge, trying not to overheat your brakes, until reaching the bridge at 1200 metres. After this, there is a severe climb back on to the plateau at the far side, which peaks at more than 3000 metres. A stern test for any vehicle; it generally takes a bus two hours to complete and a laden truck three hours.

As we crossed the Nile, the view was so good that we could not resist stopping to grab a couple of photos off the bridge. The pictures turned out well, be we also earned ourselves a reprimand from the army – who, it turned out, were staked out all over the place ensuring that no-one took photos of

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Two great African traditions: women doing hard manual work, and men crashing lorries

this ‘strategic’ infrastructure. What utter nonsense.

We blagged our way out of that one easily enough, and our luck was in again at the top of the gorge where we found ourselves a truly amazing place to stop for lunch with a vast, panoramic view of the entire gorge. We had a few cows and herdsmen for company, but no screaming kids.

Approaching Addis Ababa, we clocked up our 6000th mile since leaving London. We were definitely a long way from home now! In keeping with so much about Ethiopia, we discovered that the capital city was nothing like the hell-hole our guide book suggested – there are cinemas there, spa centres, more tree-lined streets and even supermarkets (the first we had seen since Turkey!)

There’s an excellent National Museum here, too. Many of the world’s most important fossil finds have been in Ethiopia, and the museum is a world centre for research into hominid evolution.

One of its star attractions is Lucy, who’s 3.5 million years old; when discovered, she proved that hominids evolved much earlier than had previously been assumed. Her skeleton shows evidence of a small skull capacity akin to that of apes and of a bipedal upright walk akin to that of humans, showing that bipedalism preceded an increase in brain size in evolution and filling in one of the ‘missing links’ between apes and humans.

Land Rover Yearbook 5pp Ethiopia.indd 111

As we left the museum, the heavens opened. Our first rain since Turkey – we dashed over to the closest taxi rank and jumped in. Now, every traveller has a story about taxis…

It may sounds patronising from a westerner, but taxis in developing countries can often be amusingly dilapidated. It’s just one of those areas where our cultures are miles apart. At any rate, this particular one took things to a new level.

First of all, the driver had to hotwire the car to get the ignition on. Even then, though, the starter motor wasn’t working. So he had strategically positioned the car

or a gentle incline to provide the necessary bump start. But once rolling, he couldn’t see a thing as the wipers were broken. All part of the comedy, we thought. But then the driver spun the steering wheel round and round and nothing happened to our direction of travel, and ‘comedy’ had turned into ‘danger of death.’

We demanded the driver stop, and jumped out in the nick of time.

The next taxi was a lot better, though at the end of the journey the driver turned out not to have change for a 100 Birr note. He jumped with our cash to get change – then disappeared, leaving us by the car.

So we were being hustled, then.

We were about to give up, but then we hit on the idea of removing an ignition lead from the taxi which we would ‘fix’ in exchange for our money. Surprise, surprise, the driver was watching all along – as soon as we lifted the bonnet, he suddenly appeared with the change. Hustler hustled: how sweet it must be…

Despite this, and the bitter taste left by the greedy boatman on Lake Tana, we found that we were falling in love with Ethiopia. It was hugely different from our preconceptions and much more enjoyable than we had been expecting, especially after Egypt and Sudan.

For sure, Ethiopia was the surprise of our expedition down through Africa. Such amazing scenery and landscapes, such incredibly friendly people – it’s a wonderful country, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

Raymond and Nereide drove their Range Rover from London to Cape Town in the first half of 2010. You can read the full story of their expedition at www.lilongwedown.com

111 07/11/2021 20:50

BORDER HOPPING Earthquakes, volcanoes and penguins galore in an Andean adventure on both sides of one Pictures: Jenny Bright and Gavin Lowrie

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F

ew things go completely according to plan in the off-road world. This applies whether you’re trying to clear a trial section, hoping your favourite green lane in the Peak District hasn’t been taken over by nazis or making for some far distant goal behind the wheel of an aged Land Rover.

The latter is what Jen Bright and Gavin Lowrie where doing when, on

the way south from Bolivia to Chile via the classic Lagunas trail, they broke one of their Defender 110’s front shocks.

Job one for Chile, then, was to find a mechanic. Easier said than done in the small town of San Pedro de Atacama, as it turned out, so the couple had to limp on towards the mining town of Calama – with a heavy wheel judder now limiting them to 25mph.

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of the world’s longest land borders

Above: When people talk about seeing animals on an overland expedition, odds-on they’re thinking of lions, elephants and so on in southern Africa. But the Antarctic is as rich as it comes in wildlife – some of it the most magnificent you’ll ever see (and some the most adorable) Main picture: The Torres del Paine National Park is a landscape of mountains, lakes, glaciers and icebergs – a dramatic introduction to the wonders of Patagonia

Finally, they were able to get the Defender’s wheels realigned and fit it with a full set of front shocks – including a new steering damper, which turned out not to help with the death wobble. Further investigation revealed worn panhard rod bushes, and still further revealed that the garage doing the work wasn’t going to be able to get its hands on any for longer than Jen and Gav could wait. Cue a bit of bush mechanic

Land Rover Yearbook 6pp Ruby Travel Dec.indd 113

work to get the 110 back on the road for now.

The reason Jen and Gav couldn’t wait was that they had somewhere to be. Before setting sail for South America, they had booked themselves on to an Antarctic cruise – and having used up an entire week into Chile, it was already time to cross into Argentina en route to catch a connecting flight from Buenos Aires.

There was at least time to learn a bit about northern Argentina on the way. In Salta, they visited the catchily named Museum of High Altitude Archaeology, whose star exhibit is a trio of mummified Inca children discovered as recently as 1999. Something else that became apparent was that the people are very welcoming and very, very fond of barbecued meat.

Camping wild in the Quebrada del Condorito National Park, home to the magnificent Andean condor – one of the world’s biggest birds, with a wingspan of more than ten feet.

They visited Cordoba, Argentina’s second most populous city, which is home to the Museo de la Memoria, a museum dedicated to the memories of the Disappeared – as many as 30,000 people who were abducted, tortured and killed between 1976 and 1983 during a campaign of state terror by a US-sponsored military junta. It’s known now as

Argentina’s ‘Dirty War.’ Whether it deserves to be called a war is open to question, but it was certainly dirty.

In Rosario, Jen and Gav visited the birthplace of Che Guevara and the grave of Manuel Belgrano, who designed the Argentinean flag. But the big story was a couple of miles south-east of here, on the road towards Buenos Aires which follows the southern bank of the Rio Parana – the Gaucho Festival in the town of San Antonio de Areco.

‘In South America, Gauchos are cowboys,’ explains Jen, ‘We settled at a camp site just outside of town where we were promptly invited to a proper Argentinean barbecue by a friendly family who owned a ranch near Cordoba. Gav just couldn’t resist the prospect of trying to eat half a cow!

‘That evening, the festival put on a fantastic display of traditional folk dancing and music, with Gauchos decorated in their tapered trousers,

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The Fray Bentos factory in Uruguay fell silent in 1979 and remained that way until re-opening as a museum in 2005. It played a huge role in winning WWII for the Allies, shipping more than sixteen million cans of corned beef to Europe in 1943 alone, and is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Meat remains as popular as ever in South America, where barbecues are no so much a way of cooking as a way of life. In the middle here is a mural of revolutionary icon Che Guevara, Rosario’s most famous son (at least until Leonel Messi turned up…) ponchos and berets. The next day was scheduled for the big parade and horse-riding displays, but a torrential thunderstorm put a stop to the festivities.’ What was that we we saying about things not going to plan?

Buenos Aires is only another hour from San Antonio de Areco, and Jen and Gav had made it here with a couple of weeks still to go before their flight. So they took a detour into Uruguay, visiting the town of Fray Bentos.

You probably know the name.

The town was home to a meat processing factory which closed in 1979 after 117 years in operation,

and its name became that of a very famous brand of pies.

The town’s heyday was in World War II, when the Fray Bentos company shipped more than sixteen million cans of corned beef to Europe in 1943 alone. The factory is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and there’s a museum there which opened in 2005 – though rather impressively, that didn’t stop Jen and Gav from being able to pitch their tent and camp wild in its grounds.

Uruguay only has a population of about three million – that’s less than Birmingham – and half of them live in the capital, Montevideo.

There’s another museum here – dedicated to the history of the 1972 Andes flight disaster, which gained global attention when it emerged that survivors had resorted to cannibalism to stay alive in the frozen wilderness. Let’s not make any smart-alec comments about Uruguay’s meat processing industry, shall we…?

After what Jen describes as ‘a short but very sweet visit’ to Uruguay, the couple’s Defender was scheduled to be parked up in a storage facility just outside Buenos Aires. From here, Jen and Gav took a flight to Ushuaia, at the southern tip of Argentina, from

where they would travel by sea to explore first South Georgia and the Falklands and then Antarctica.

If you’re into wildlife, you’ll be turning green with envy. Rockhopper penguins, whales, a black-browed albatross… and then they arrived on the Falklands themselves and best of all, they spotted a pair of Land Rover 110s!

‘One formerly belonged to the governor of the Falklands,’ says Gav, ‘and still had the attachment on its bonnet for a flag. They were transporting people who struggled to walk up and down a hill.’

Most mind-boggling of all, though, is the fact that there’s actually a

‘Most mind-boggling of all is the fact that there’s a Land Rover dealer on the Falkland Islands. It’s in Port Stanley, it’s called Falklands 4x4 and at long last, it gave Jen and Gav the opportunity to buy a new pair of shocks for their Defender…’

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Above: As we noted opposite, the Fray Bentos meat factory is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. There can’t be many of those where you can park up your 4x4 and camp wild without the culture police turning up mob-handed…

Below: Perito Moreno is a beast of a glacier. It’s just under 20 miles long, covers an area of almost 100 square miles and towards an average of 74 metres above the surface of Lago Argentina. You can probably just about see why the national park in which it’s located is called Los Glaciares Land Rover dealer on the islands.

It’s in Port Stanley (hardly surprisingly), it’s called Falklands 4x4 and at long last, it gave Jen and Gav the opportunity to buy a new pair of shocks for their longsuffering Defender!

‘We were also very lucky to meet Tony, who we got talking to when we learned he owned a Defender too,’ says Jen. ‘Tony kindly offered

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to take us on a tour of Stanley in his Land Rover, driving us off-road to visit battlefields and landmarks while giving great insight into the islands along the way. It was only later that he revealed the Defender we were in had belonged to Prince William while he was stationed in the Falklands!’

Celebrating Christmas aboard a ship as snow falls on a South

Atlantic seascape of icebergs the size of aircraft hangars sounds pretty magical. As does stepping ashore at Brown Bluff and, in Jen’s case, becoming one of the very few people to have set foot on all the world’s seven continents.

‘If you ever think about going to Antarctica, don’t think about the cost,’ she advises. ‘Just go. It’s like nowhere else on Earth. At times we

had to pinch ourselves at what we were seeing and experiencing.’

You can’t drive there, obviously.

Though you can drive to Ushuaia, which was what Jen and Gav set out to do having been reunited with their 110 in Buenos Aires.

At this point, the slow and easy pace of expedition life took a bit of a back seat. It’s around 2500 miles from Buenos Aires to the

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Few parts of Britain, which is of course what the Falklands are, could be more suited to 4x4 ownership. The Land Rover pictured above has a bit of provenance behind it, having originally been the property of Prince William southern tip of Argentina, and the Defender mopped it up in ten days. Ruta Nacional 3 quickly became the couple’s new home – though they were sharing it with ostriches, armadillos, roadrunners and guanacos, as well as visiting the world’s largest parrot colony at Balneario El Cóndor. Here, they camped wild on top of cliffs whose faces contain more than 35,000 nests. the guy who counted them probably didn’t have trouble getting to sleep that night.

Stopping in Puerto Madryn to pick up a serpentine belt and tensioner for the 110, Jen and Gav continued to Ushuaia. Flanked by the Southern Ocean to one side and the Andes to the other, this really does feel like the end of the road. That’s literally what it was for a couple of Yorkshire who they bumped into there, too, called Amy and Guy, who had spent

the previous 18 months travelling south from Alaska aboard a Land Rover of their own.

Having driven to the southern tip of the Americas, what was there to do next? Why, drive back north again, obviously. The purpose behind that ten-day blast was to get to Ushuaia nice and quickly – leaving as much time as possible for the return journey.

This would involve several more flirtations with the frontier between Argentina and Chile – which, at just under 3300 miles, is the third longest on the planet (try naming the longer ones before Googling it – one is obvious but you’ll do well to get both). Back in Chile, the Torres del Paine national park provided a spectacular introduction to Patagonia, a landscape of mountains, lakes, icebergs and glaciers.

It’s a wild place, and all the more wonderful for it. But you don’t expect the wildlife to have a delinquent streak to it. One morning, however, a southern crested caracara bird landed on the 110’s bonnet and started tearing the rubber from its windscreen wipers.

Is that the avian equivalent of smashing up a bus shelter? Either way, thankfully, the spares supply included a new set…

Rather more bothersome was the need to replace the rear prop and UJ, which happened back in Argentina in El Calafate. This is the gateway to another national park, Los Glaciares.

The Perito Moreno glacier itself is almost 20 miles long and covers an area of just under 100 square miles. It has an average height of 74 metres above the water of Lago Argentina, too.

‘We travelled to a sheltered camping spot in Tres Lagos,’ says Gav, ‘before making our way 350 miles to the last town before the Chilean border, Los Antiguos, which is set on a stunning turquoise lake.’

Yep, back to Chile again. From here, the couple’s route was to follow the 770-mile Carretera Austral, which as well as offering sensational views of forests, glaciers, turquoise lakes and the Pacific Ocean, had the added bonus of being largely unpaved.

Following a visit to Laguna San Rafael National Park, home of the 30,000-year-old San Valentin glacier, a pit stop with a mechanic in La Junta finally sorted new bushes for the 110’s front shocks. Things started to hot up after this with visits to a series of volcanoes – including Calbuco, several of whose 150 churches and chapels join the

You know that tiresome #nofilter hashtag people keep using with pictures on social media which have obviously been done using a filter? Patagonia wrote the book on it. The mixture of austere bleakness, almost monochrome rock landscapes and vibrant blue lakes defies everything your eyes thought they knew about the world

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Fray Bentos site on UNESCO’s world heritage list. these buildings are famous for being made of wood, which sounds like a bit of a fire hazard, but it was raining so that was alright.

Another quick hop over the border to Argentina saw the Land Rover being left behind for a winetasting tour of Mendoza. Alcohol and driving definitely don’t mix, so Jen and Gav decided to hire bikes… which of course require a good sense of balance. Enough said.

That was a little lairy, but not as lairy as what happened once they had crossed back into Chile via the 3200-metre Paso Internacional Los

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Libertadores. Descending down the steep hairpins on the western side of the pass, they had almost reached Los Andes when the Land Rover’s clutch let go.

There aren’t many things more effective than this at leaving you totally stranded. Rescued by a kind father and son, the Defender was dragged to its final South American capital, Santiago.

‘While it was being fixed, we stayed in a small house owned by Teresita, a wonderful lady who lived next door,’ says Gav. ‘We were invited for Sunday lunch with Teresita and her children and had a wonderful time, filled with

meat from the parilla and lots of good wine.’

Jen continues: ‘The following weekend, we reciprocated and invited them for a traditional English Sunday dinner, consisting of roast beef and Yorkshire pudding. They loved it!’

Less fun, though a travel experience in its own right, was a 7.1 magnitude earthquake which struck one evening and lasted for what must have felt like a very long minute. This was an odd way to say goodbye to South America, but a few days later the Land Rover was repaired, back on the road and, having had a thorough all-round

clean, ready for a journey to the docks. Next stop, Vancouver.

‘South America has been a brilliant experience and has been so very kind to us,’ was Gav’s glowing verdict on the continent. ‘We both overwhelmingly loved Colombia and we could not recommend it highly enough to other overlanders.’

‘Its people are the friendliest we have met,’ agrees Jen. ‘In fact that is the standout trait of South America, followed by the continent’s diversity.

It is so beautiful, with beaches, mountains, jungles, the history – we will certainly be back.’ Now, there’s something we can see going to plan.

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BUYERS’ GUIDE

Series I (1948-1958)

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f you want to be the owner of a vehicle that oozes heritage like no other, then surely a Series I Land Rover is the way to go.

The Land-Rover, as it was known until the Series II came along, is the most sought after Land Rover for purists and collectors alike – particularly in its original 80” guise.

Its 1940s’ engineering gives it a real charisma, but consequently, parts aren’t as readily available as they once were. Restoration

£5000-£75,000+ projects require deep pockets, but then a finished example will fetch mega bucks.

Gone are the days where you could use a Series I as an actual Land Rover, because with restored and cherished examples now retailing where they’re at, preservation is the aim of the game.

The rarer and earlier the vehicle, the higher the price tag gets. But can you really put a price on such an icon?

Pros: Heritage, charm, a true classic, the original Land Rover Cons: Availability of parts, price tag on early 80s

Series II/IIA (1958-1971)

£2500-£40,000

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n 1958, the second-generation Land Rover was born and along came the barrel sides which we continue to recognise on even the very last Defenders.

Today the Series II or IIA is a more affordable prospect than a Series I, yet it still carries much of that early charm that makes it a hit with enthusiasts.

The prices are on the increase, however, as these 50-year-old vehicles start to come into their

own as a collector’s item. A 2.25 petrol 88” would be our pick, as the diesel engines, certainly the 2.0-litre diesel, were underpowered and noisy.

The Series II/IIA carries a wider stance than its predecessor and adds an extra (albeit thin) layer of refinement over the Series I. While the engines have excellent longevity, however, they do need to have been maintained properly. Be thorough in your checks.

Pros: As a resto it’s a sound investment, some examples now MOT exempt, more desirable than SIII Cons: Bulkheads very prone to rotting, check suspension leaves for seizing

Series III (1971-1985)

£2500-£30,000

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ollowing on from the Series IIA, the Series III emerged in 1971 with a few cosmetic tweaks to freshen up the model.

Headlights were shifted out to the wings in-line with new legislation and the dash received a bit of padding to hide the new safety bar across the top of the bulkhead – not sure it’s a five stars on the Euro NCAP scale, though.

The Series III wasn’t too dissimilar to the Series II in mechanical

terms, keeping the same 2.25-litre engines throughout its production, although in 1980 the 2.25 motors switched to a more durable five bearing setup.

The transmission also received syncromesh on all forward gears, which helps make it that bit easier to live with.

They still carry the simplicity of earlier Land Rovers, but can be obtained for a fraction of the price... for now.

Pros: Most affordable way into Series ownership, still has the Series pedigree, parts still widely available Cons: Not as desirable as earlier Series models

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Series IIA/IIB FC (1962-1971) £2500-£15,000 BUYERS’ GUIDE

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orward Control Land Rovers are a cult within a cult. In fact, with the later 101 getting most of the attention here, the Series IIA and IIB are a cult within a cult within a cult.

They’re a genuine rarity, too – with all the cachet, pride and immense awkwardness that comes with this status.

By ‘rare’, we’re talking about less than 2500 Series IIA FCs in total.

And they tended to have a very hard life, so not many have survived to tell the tale.

Forward-Control models differed from everyday Series IIs by having heavy-duty ENV axles, but engine-wise they had the familiar 2.25 petrol and diesel lumps in addition to the later 2.6 petrol unit.

There’s an awful lot in the way of unique parts here, though.

So, don’t expect Foward Control ownership to give you an easy time in the workshop. If you’re up for it, though, the pleasure you’ll get from owning one of these classic old trucks is off the scale

Pros: A Land Rover like no other Cons: Especially brutal to drive, and to find parts

Lightweight (1968-1984)

£3500-£22,000

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ossibly the ugly duckling of the Series Land Rover family – but that doesn’t mean to say you’ll struggle to find any love for the Series Lightweights.

These military-derived vehicles can be easily distinguished from the regular Series Land Rovers, with visibly more angular wings and a frontal appearance that does divide opinion on occasion.

To mimic the Series machines from civvy street, the SIII Light-

weight – built from 1972 onwards – also had its headlights switched out to the wings.

The Lightweight used to be popular for trialling, as it’s narrower than a standard Series II or III. Today, though, they’re classics – whose military heritage adds an extra dimension to Land Rover ownership.

It means you get a Land Rover that could have a few more stories to tell – and you have something that stands out from the crowd.

Pros: Not like all the other Series Land Rovers out there, military background, 2.25 petrol is lovely and reliable Cons: Styling isn’t to everyone’s taste, can be pricey owing to their rarity compared to other Series IIs and IIIs

101 (1972-1978)

O

nly ever sold to the Army, the 101 became a cult vehicle when the time came for demob.

They were flogged off at what now looks like throwaway prices and mainly turned into knockabout offroad toys – definitely not something you’d do with one today, given the rarity and classic value they’ve taken on.

Compared to the IIA/IIB FC, the 101 is more fun thanks to its

£7500-£26,000 V8 engine and more sopisticated chassis. They used to be popular as expedition trucks, too, with all sorts of DIY conversions to be found.

This is still a military tool, though – which means some still have fixtures and fittings from their Army life, something that can be a real talking point. This is definitely a vehicle for enthusiasts – with costs that are sky-high even by classic Land Rover standards.

Pros: Master of the road. Lovely V8 soundtrack. Everybody who sees one loves it Cons: Monumental running costs. Expensive to buy, too

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BUYERS’ GUIDE

90/110 (1983-1990)

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he icon of the 4x4 world. This is Land Rover at its best: a no nonsense workhorse that can also take you just about anywhere in the entire world.

Early examples of the Ninety and One Ten are worth keeping hold of, providing they’re in good condition – but you’ll be searching far and wide for examples that are.

This was the birth of the Defender, despite not being christened offi-

£2500-£19,000 cially until 1990, and as such these Land Rovers had coil-sprung suspension, new engines – although they were still terribly underwhelming – and off-road capability that has still yet to be matched today.

A very early 2.25 petrol 90 is a rare thing, and a beautiful one too.

But perhaps try for a 2.5TD version with low miles and good history.

They’re robust and as simple as they come.

Pros: Good ones are now worth saving, same ability as Tdiengined Defenders Cons: Engines underpowered, not many left in good condition

127 (1985-1990)

£7500-£25,000

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he 127 was built on a special production line in Solihull which took 110 chassis and stretched them. It was designed for military and commercial users and came in standard form as a high-capacity double-cab.

These days, it’s very rare to find a 127 that hasn’t been hammered, restored and/or converted, or all three. People looking for a work truck tend to go for a later 130, so the 127 is more of an enthusiast’s

motor. It’s popular for home-brewed overland conversions, too.

The 127 pre-dates the advert of Land Rover’s Tdi engines, meaning they were either TD or V8 powered and therefore excruciatingly slow or cripplingly expensive. As a result, almost all have had an engine conversion by now, too.

Overall, then, there’s a lot to be wary of when buying one of these.

Do so wisely, though, and it’s a whole lot of truck for your money.

Pros: Enormous size means limitless character and potential. Perfect for turning into your overlanding dream home Cons: Unwieldy. Sure to have had a colourful life

Defender 130 (1990-2016)

£12,500-£30,000

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hen Land Rover introduced the Defender name, it was actually the 130 that changed the most. That’s because unlike the old 127, it was built on a proper chassis of its own rather than a stretched 110 frame.

The advent of the Tdi engine was the making of the 130, too. At last, Land Rover could make them pull properly without returning ghastly single-figure fuel economy by using a hard-worked V8.

As a result, you’ll find many more original(ish) 130s than 127s. Some are even still in service with the utility companies they were built for.

There’s the danger that you’ll find yourself looking at a site motor that’s had dozens of drivers and they’ve all left the maintenance to each other. But by and large, 130s have been well looked after and make a very sound investment. And if you want a Defender for overlanding, look no further.

Pros: A proper truck with huge capabilities in every area, and still surprisingly agile off-road Cons: It’s a big lump if you don’t actually need that much size

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Defender 200 Tdi (1990-1994) £4000-£29,000 BUYERS’ GUIDE

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he Tdi engine, which arrived with the Defender name, can last for decades if it’s looked after. Find one that’s had all its oil changes (a tall order) and it’ll go round (and round) the clock.

The good thing about the earlier 200Tdi is that it’s simpler than the later 300. What you gain here you lose in refinement, but this is seen by many expecrts as the best Defender of them all.

The LT77 gearbox in the 200 Tdi is more truck-like than the later

R380, with a noticeably heavier clutch. They’re doughtily strong and reliable, though, making them very well suited to the Defender.

When buying a 200 Tdi, you need to be sure it’s an original engine you’re getting, not a conversion using an old Discovery unit. This is most common on pre-1990 vehicles, but Land Rover didn’t fully discontinue its earlier engines until well into the pre-Tdi era, so don’t just assume what you’re getting is what it seems to be.

Pros: Superb off-road. Very simple, especially the electrics. Arguably the last truly DIY-maintainable engine Land Rover ever made Cons: Lots of battered and/or dishonest ones around

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BUYERS’ GUIDE

Defender 300 Tdi (1994-98)

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he 300 Tdi engine is very different to the 200 unit it replaced, though the two are related. It’s much more refined and smoother to drive, though there are more electronics involved so later versions in particular are less of a DIY fix.

The arrival of the 300 Tdi also brought with it the R380 gearbox.

This used to have a terrible reputation for relability, but most have been put right by now and they’ve become sought after for their light clutch and better shift action.

£4500-£30,000 It was during the 300 Tdi era that Land Rover started making the Defender available with things like metallic paint and alloy wheels.

Obviously, anyone can replicate this now, and almost all 90s and 110s have been modified or rebuilt in the decades since they were new – but it does mean that if you find a one-owner example with the lifestyle kit, there’s a chance that it might never have been off-roaded.

In which case, it’s worth whatever the seller is asking and more.

Pros: Strength and simplicity. Engine still very basic compared to what followed it. Perhaps the definitive Defender Cons: Sure to be very different to when it left the factory

Defender Td5 (1998-2007)

£6000-£30,000

F

ollowing on from the Tdi era, Land Rover issued the Defender with its new Td5 engine from 1998 to 2007.

The engine is arguably Land Rover’s most reliable unit and it’s a strong performer out of the box, although it does lend itself to being tuned. So make sure that any mods have been done properly.

Remaps, EGR valve deletes and uprated intercoolers are a few examples of what many of these Defenders have been subjected to.

Lots of power doesn’t always mean happy faces, especially when you’re the one mopping up after somebody else.

The rear of the chassis has frequently been called into question, too. So be prepared to treat the rear crossmember with kid gloves if it’s in good shape – or else face the consequences.

With minimal electrics, the Td5 Defender is still a DIY machine and you’ll be working on one of Land Rover’s most notable masterpieces.

Pros: Off-road capability, power, reliability (generally) Cons: Rear chassis, premium prices at the moment. Late ones cost a fortune in road tax

Defender TDCi (2007-2016) £9500-£195,000

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he last of the Defenders were fitted with Ford Transit engines – first the 2.4 TDCi, followed by the 2.2 TDCi, which were brought in to meet Euro V emission standards and keep the Defender alive for another few years.

Sadly, these engines denoted the Defender’s swansong, the twilight of its days. They were fitted with six-speed Getrag gearboxes, still had phenomenal off-road capability and even made the Defender a nice

place to be. But they were still very much Defenders.

The era of blinging had also begun by now, and you can find special editions and boutique conversions costing obscene amounts of money. You will pay a premium for any these Defenders, and prices have rocketed upwards since the end of production. But if you can grab a 2.2 TDCi and start preserving it now, you may well never see depreciation.

Pros: Better emissions (marginally), more creature comforts, same off-road prowess Cons: Price, more electrics, last of the breed

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Defender (2020-on)

£45,000-£105,000

BUYERS’ GUIDE

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f the subject of the new Defender comes up in enthusiast circles, try to steer it away on to something safer. Like Brexit, for example.

Much as it may infuriate purists, however, the Defender is actually a very wonderful thing. It’s kind of like an old one, only with space, comfort and equipment.

It’s tough, rugged and capable, too, and the 110’s interior has a degree of practicality that puts the old model in the shade. It’s closer

in nature to the Discovery 3 in this way, which is no bad thing at all.

The 90, meanwhile, drives with the same brash verve as the old one.

The big difference is that you can’t work on it yourself. This goes for maintenance and, crucially, making modifications – a market Land Rover wants to take back and have for itself. It won’t hold its value the way an original-shaper does, either.

Be in no doubt, though – this is a superb vehicle.

Pros: Comfortable, capable and fit for purpose. Wonderful to drive.

Reminiscent of the Discovery 3 in its all-round ability Cons: Expensive, and a million miles from the DIY fixability that made the original Defender so popular

Freelander 1 (1997-2006)

£400-£5500

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e haven’t always held the Freelander 1 in the highest regard here. But as market prices constantly change, so too can our opinion on certain vehicles.

With examples attainable from as little as £500, the Freelander 1 represents a cheap gateway into Landy ownership.

There are plenty of issues to be aware of, though. The viscous coupling is expensive to replace

and can be upset by simply having mismatched tyres on your axles.

The 1.8 petrol used to be notorious for head gasket failures, but today’s replacements are much more robust.

The V6 is thirsty and the 2.0Di is gutless, so opt for a TD4 – but check the condition of the injectors first. Buy an FL1 and you even get a Landy that’s decent off-road and doesn’t rust after five minutes.

Pros: Cheap to buy, no major rust issues, surprisingly good off-road Cons: There are better Land Rovers out there, FL2 showed the FL1 how it should have been done

Freelander 2 (2006-2015)

£2000-£19,500

Versions: 2.2 4cyl turbo-diesel, available in two- or four-wheel drive, 3.2 V6 petrol (‘07-’09)

M

ost people will turn their noses up at Freelanders because they’re not properly recognised as true Land Rovers. But while you should turn your nose up at the FL1, the Freelander 2 actually makes for a much smarter proposition than you may think.

Because of it being replaced by the Discovery Sport, the FL2 is now an affordable option that still offers good levels of refinement, a strong 2.2-litre four-cylinder turbo-diesel

engine and a level of practicality that means it can make for a great family vehicle. Plus it’s become one of the most reliable Land Rovers out there.

Prices are now falling, thanks to the Freelander name having disappearing from Land Rover’s current showroom line-up. But for £10,000, you can now get a capable all-rounder that is actually pretty adept off-road and yet still economical to run.

Pros: Better off-road than you may anticipate, reliability, refinement, economy of diesel engine Cons: Transmissions can wear quickly if used for towing

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BUYERS’ GUIDE

Range Rover (1970-1996)

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he Range Rover Classic is one of those vehicles that you could theoretically still use everyday in the 21st Century.

If you’re running a V8, however, that may not be such a wise idea.

Classic Range Rovers still provide a relatively refined and great drive today, but they can be thirsty if you’re not in one of the various turbo-diesel examples.

That said, if you own one and it’s in good condition, look after it, as it

£5000-£85,000 will only appreciate. These vehicles are popular with collectors, and values are going up all the time.

Unfortunately, however, many have succumbed to corrosion or have been abused off-road to the point of no return – and parts have started becoming a problem.

Still, while an early 70s Classic may not be attainable for everyone, tidy examples of the late four-door versions can make for an equally tidy investment.

Pros: Most usable classic Land Rover, V8 power, ride quality Cons: Rust (again), availability of parts for early models, V8 thirst

Range Rover (1994-2002)

£1500-£25,000

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any people believe the P38A Range Rover to be a bit of a menace – and often it’s completely justified. Lights on the dashboard, air suspension failure, head gasket failure... the list can really continue.

Still, it’s not all doom and gloom with the P38. In fact, if you find one in good working order, it’ll be sensational. While it remains that way, at least.

Service history is a must, and if you’re going to own one then some

diagnostic equipment is going to be a better companion than a spanner.

Avoid the diesel variant. The engine was adopted from a BMW saloon and isn’t anywhere near up to the task of the extra weight a Range Rover carries.

Go for a 4.6 HSE, or a special edition with the same engine. It’s actually more economical than the 4.0 V8 and you’ll get all the toys.

They might not be working, but at least you’ll get them…

Pros: Luxury, price, a Land Rover that doesn’t rust. Could even P38 prices rise soon?

Cons: Electrics. Nuff said

Range Rover (2002-12)

£2250-£28,000

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ompared to the P38, the L322 Range Rover was a saint.

Generally. Its electronic aids were far less temperamental and it delivered a new level of luxury to four-wheeled motoring.

The Td6 engine receives mixed reviews: some say it’s underpowered while others say it’s the best of the bunch.

Common sense would steer you towards a TDV8, either the 3.6 or later 4.4, but these are the L322s

holding out for strong money. The petrol V8s, on the other hand, are lingering with very appealing price tags – but don’t think running one would be cheap.

As with many 21st Century Land Rovers, they have lost their accessability for the home mechanic.

Drivetrain faults are becoming more frequent, so you need to look for that all-important FSH. As a car, however, it’s probably everything you’ll ever need.

Pros: Great off-road, luxury, image, TDV8 powerplants Cons: When things go wrong, they don’t tend to do it cheaply

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Range Rover (2012-on)

£27,000-£220,000

BUYERS’ GUIDE

I

f you want the very best in automotive luxury, then you need look no further.

The latest incarnation of Land Rover’s flagship Range Rover weighs a whopping 400kg less than its predecessor thanks to the use of an aluminium body, which helps on mpg – although owning one of these suggests that your cash flow isn’t particularly an issue.

This is the last word in elegance and majestic motoring. All the

engines supply copious amounts of power to your right foot, while the L405 hasn’t lost any of its off-road pedigree... even if taking one offroad is like asking your alcoholic friend to a wine-testing session.

They could comfortably partake, but probably shouldn’t.

Prices are still only right for Premier League footballers and people with a link to the royal family. If you fit into that category, then we envy you.

Pros: Styling, engines, capability at pretty much everything Cons: Price. A certain type of person will resent you for owning it

Range Rover Sport Mk1 (2005-2013)

M

uch of the Range Rover Sport was borrowed from the Discovery 3. In fact it shared virtually identical underpinnings, whereas today’s RR Sport uses actual Range Rover foundations.

Nevertheless, Land Rover put a Range Rover in a tracksuit and attempted to make a handler out of it. To some extent they succeeded, although it’s no sports car despite what it says on the back of the vehicle.

£3250-£25,000 It can play the leisure vehicle very well, though, and will go off-road like the best of them.

If you’re going to buy one, then you need to love it for itself, because a Discovery of the same era is more practical – while a full-fat Range Rover is always going to carry an extra layer of prestige and less of a proceeds-of-crime image.

They’re still a good all-rounder, though, and have now become relatively affordable to buy.

Pros: Decent performance from both engines and chassis, a lot of car for your money Cons: Not as practical as a Discovery, not as prestigious as a proper Range Rover

RR Sport Mk2 (2013-on)

£22,500-£190,000

T

he second-generation Range Rover Sport has also been on a diet to save over 400kg, just like the daddy Range Rover.

That means that even this big bruiser is relatively economical when spec’d with the SDV6 motor.

Some won’t like the vulgar and flamboyant posture, while others will adhere to the smart, yet mean styling. But no one can knock the

Sport for its performance. It feels incredibly light for such a big car, and if you’ve robbed a bank and can afford the monstrous SVR version, it’s as good round a race track as it is on a green lane.

The only stumbling block with such a fine motor is going to be how to pay for it. Removing limbs is possibly the most feasible option, or wait ten years and see if the prices

Pros: Feels light considering weight, engines, almost as luxurious as its bigger brother Cons: You’ll need deep pockets

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BUYERS’ GUIDE

RR Evoque Mk1 (2011-19)

W

hen the Evoque was launched, it signalled JLR’s intent on hitting the masses.

And given that the Evoque was, and still is, their fastest-selling vehicle, they clearly hit the brief, even if it wasn’t for the traditional Land Rover owner.

They don’t much like the Victoria Beckham connection, nor that it is the polar opposite to a Defender.

It’s actually still a capable thing

£9500-£47,000 off-tarmac, but it would rather not go down that route.

Nevertheless, it is economical by Land Rover standards and because there are so many out there, they have decent residuals.

The Convertible was launched in 2016, and the are three and fivedoor version. We say stick to the latter, and avoid the 2WD model.

What’s a Range Rover without fourwheel-drive?

Pros: Economy, handling, beats its rivals off-road. Still mainly bought first and foremost for its concept-car appearance Cons: Practicality and rear-seat space are remarkably poor

Range Rover Evoque Mk2 (2019-on)

A

new Range Rover Evoque has hit the roads of the UK, but you’d do well to tell the difference between the new model and the outgoing Evoque.

Most Range Rovers all look the same at the front now, but the new Evoque has adopted a similiar back end to the larger Velar.

It’s not just the exterior that mimics the larger Velar, however, as the

£31,600-£55,000 Evoque has gained the latest Touch Pro Duo tech and an improvement in quality.

The main highlight of the new Evoque is the fact the majority of the range is made up of mild hybrids, available with diesel and petrol engines combining to an electric motor. Only the base frontwheel drive D150 Evoque escapes the electrification.

Pros: Feels much more like a proper Range Rover to drive and to sit in than its predecessor Cons: Petrol engine is disappointing on economy, even in hybrid form

Range Rover Velar (2017-on)

£31,500-£95,000

A

nd so the Range Rover family welcomes its fourth model, confidently making it the most prominent among Land Rover’s family of sub brands.

The Velar’s styling has won several awards, and it is indeed a fine-looking vehicle. It’s based upon the same architecture as the Jaguar F-Pace, which is a good start.

All things being relative, it has greater off-road ability than the

aforementioned vehicle, which may be good for Green Oval enthusiasts.

It’s available with a wide choice of engines, too, most of which combine good economy with usable everyday performance.

The interior is enormously stylish, in a classily minimalist kind of a way. Even by modern Ranget standards, though, it doesn’t feel like being in a Land Rover – and you do pay a premium for those looks…

Pros: Very stylish, interior, choice of engines, right now one of the freshest vehicles on the road Cons: Feels less like a Land Rover than possibly any other vehicle the company has ever made

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Discovery 1 (1989-1998)

£1000-£18,000

BUYERS’ GUIDE

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he earliest version of the Discovery was aimed purely at providing a middle ground between the agricultural Defender and the luxury, upper-class Range Rover.

With underpinnings that made it just like a 100” Defender, it carried much of that model’s capabilities.

But it built on those with more refinement and a driving experience more suitable to families. What it didn’t have, though, was a Range Rover price tag.

Blessed with the same wonderful Tdi engines, the Discovery saved Land Rover and hit back at offerings from other nations by being an affordable all-rounder. And that still holds true even today.

Early Discovery 1s in fine condition are now classics and will continue to appreciate. We would recommend trying to find a tidy and later 300Tdi example, but watch out for body rust – the boot floor, arches and wings etc.

Pros: Almost as good as the Defender off-road, but cheaper to buy, nicer to drive and more practical as an everyday car Cons: The body rusts like it’s been doused in sea water

Discovery 2 (1998-2004)

£1100-£9000

F

ollowing on from the firstgeneration Discovery, in 1998 Land Rover gave its family SUV some minor cosmetic tweaks and a whole new power unit in the shape of the Td5.

The engine is arguably Land Rover’s most reliable unit and it’s a strong performer out of the box, although it does lend itself to being tuned – just make sure any mods have been done properly. You can also buy a V8, but the fuel bill isn’t

going to be welcome, plus they’re more temperamental. As are the electrics on all examples.

Unlike on the D1, its the chassis that’s the problem, not the body.

We all know that Discos make for a great tow car, and consequently many of the rear chassis on D2s have dipped their rears into the sea.

Not all of them live to tell the tale...

Get a later example for more creature comforts and a locking centre diff, too.

Pros: Td5 power and reliability, great all-rounder, better comfort than D1, diff locks standard for ‘03 onwards (model dependent) Cons: Rear chassis redefines the term ‘rust prone’. Dashboard warning lights (the infamous ‘three amigos’) are but a puddle away

Discovery 3/4 (2004-2017)

£2950-£38,000

T

he Discovery went through a dramatic revamp for its launch in 2004, but it came out the other side as one hell of a vehicle.

Greatly improved in terms of power and refinement, the Disco 3 received the relatively economical 2.7 TDV6 engine (although the thirsty 4.4 V8 petrol was an option) and became the first Land Rover to be given Terrain Response. If you need one vehicle in your life, this

could be the one that ticks the most boxes at once.

Be wary of maintenance costs, especially as you approach the 105,000-mile/seven-year mark that means the timing belt is due – in many cases it’s a body-off job.

The 3.0 TDV6 and SDV6 engines are even better, with monumental amounts of torque. Luxury has also increased significantly in later examples. A later SDV6 model is best.

Pros: Off-road capability, usability for every occasion, luxury on later models, torque of 3.0-litre engines Cons: Maintenance costs, air compressor on D3s, D4s not so cheap

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BUYERS’ GUIDE Discovery 5 (2017-on)

L

aunched a couple of years ago, the Disco 5 has received high praise for taking the utilitarian Land Rover into new territory.

Land Rover needed to improve economy in particular with this edition of the Disco, and having chopped 480kg from the kerbweight, along with introducing new engines, they’ve taken one huge step towards doing so.

Having driven the latest Discovery, we can confirm that it has

£25,600-£80,000 lost none of its versatility and is comfortably the most capable Land Rover currently on sale.

All of the engines have great flexibility and, along with its increasingly upmarket interior, the new Disco 5 is one of the best machines to cover long distances in, whether that’s on the road or not.

It’s easy to overspend on options, but any Disco will do all you ask of it. The high-speccers really are fabulous to sit in, though.

Pros: Immense blend of comfort,class and practicality Cons: The first Disco that doesn’t feel in any way like a truck. Range Rover style luxury may discourage you from using that practicality

Discovery Sport (2015-19)

£15,000-£35,000

B

rought in to replace the Freelander 2, the Discovery Sport was the vehicle that turned the Discovery brand into a family.

It has come to be so much more than a re-badged Freelander, though. For starters, the Discovery Sport has seven seats (just), drives better than a Freelander 2 and is now more refined thanks to the Ingenium Td4 engine.

Land Rover is now churning out substantial units of the baby Disco,

now even matching the Evoque for pace as one of the fastest-selling vehicles they make.

It’s a more usable vehicle than the Evoque, though, and you’re less likely to find yourself on the receiving end of mocking banter for driving a car designed by one of the Spics Girls.

Grab a cleverly-spec’d SE Tech for a car that can be as practical as a daddy Disco, but for a more attractive price.

Pros: More practical than an Evoque – and less vulgar. Seven seats, capable enough off-road Cons: Back seats only for small mammals, price of high-spec models

Discovery Sport (2019-on) £21,000-£52,000

T

he second-generation Disco Sport came along only four years after the first. That’s because once again, it’s related to the Evoque, which was ready for a full new model in 2019.

The Sport is a premium midsized SUV with seven seats and, by the standards of its class, a decent level of off-road ability. It’s a massively popular choice for the school run – and, with the arrival of

a plug-in hybrid option last year, as a company car.

The Discovery Sport is a highly refined vehicle to drive – smooth, quiet, responsive and generally streets ahead of the old one. Cabin quality has taken a step up from the first model too – it’s now a totally convincing premium vehicle, and the range offers enough choices to suit anybody with the means to buy one.

Pros: Classy and practical cabin, all-round good to drive, PHEV model is a go-to tax-buster Cons: For the price of some models, you can go 100% on-trend and get a new Defender

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Land Rover Yearbook 09/11/2021 23:25

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