Land Rovers of London at Goodwood

It’s fair to say I have a love hate relationship with Land Rovers; 12 consecutive years of ownership, and four Land Rovers, (five if you include a slightly misguided purchase of a white commercial Disco). I’m not much of a mechanic, but our first Landy, an ex RAF 109 soft top, petrol engine, certainly gave me a lesson in mechanics, albeit with a steep learning curve. It was an amazing workhorse, but not so keen on the work out it gave the driver, was also its intended purpose. It was a bit like trying to wrestle a lion every time you wanted to turn a a corner, or heaven forbid, you managed to pick up some speed and then hit the smallest bump in the road. That small bump would lead to a serious struggle to keep hold of the wheel as it wobbled and shook and tried to throw the vehicle into the nearest ditch. It was soft top when we bought it, but soon realised this wasn’t suitable, so I found a second hand hard top salvaged form and old Water Board landy. It was some time ago, but I recall it was surprisingly easy to fit, and transformed the vehicle, although it was somewhat noisier, but the lack of smell from the exhaust that used to leak on from the old canvas cover, was a new pleasure. A few years later we upgraded to a 110, again an ex-military which had been winterised. This meant it had a heated windscreen and radiators below the rear bench seats in the back which could be turned on and off via a tap.

I think we had this for a couple of years, and probably spent the same amount on repairs as we did purchasing it in the first place. I recall one summer holiday in Cornwall, lying underneath it for two days, removing and fitting a new fuel tank; it had to go. Strangely, we sold it to a guy from Birmingham, but a year or so later, I used to see it driving around where we lived. When we moved house, there it was parked outside a house further down the road. When I spoke to the owner he said he’d bought it from some chap in Birmingham and absolutely loved it, never had a thing wrong with it! Anyway onto landy no.3 an ex-DEFRA 110, no rear windows at all and a rifle rack still mounted in the back, and a strong smell of disinfectant. We later discovered it had been used for the Badger culling; it was a rather unusual blue colour, and was surprisingly reliable. Sadly it was stolen whilst I was at a farm auction in Hampshire, I’m not entirely sure why I was there, but the saddest part from the experience was losing some of my Grandfathers old hand tools that were in the back. So we were now up to landy no.4 nothing very exciting, the very common green body and white roof 110 Defender, honestly, I don’t remember much about it, it was just a landy. I think when I started to do more longer journeys, the ridiculously high fuel consumption got the better of us, and it had to go.