As soon as I saw this Land Rover on a Chicago street several months ago, I knew I’d have to photograph it to share with you here. But I’ve been dragging my feet. Although I can recognize a Land Rover from 1,000 yards, everything I know to write about them could fit on a grain of rice with room left over.
I recognize these beasts thanks to the movie Born Free. If you were a kid in the late 1960s, admit it: Isn’t this scene the first thing you think of when you see a Land Rover?
I did some Web Fu to learn enough about Land Rovers to say this much: This Land Rover has the body shell of the Series II and Series IIa. It’s hard to tell the two series apart without popping the hood, as a new 2.25-liter inline-four diesel became the standard engine for the Series IIa. So I’m going to ride the fence and date this Land Rover to 1961, the year Series II production ended and Series IIa production began.
The interior looks pretty good for being around a half-century old. Of course, it’s not like there’s a vinyl dash pad that would crack, or plastic door-panel pieces that would fade.
And so I leave it to you to share your Land Rover knowledge in your comments. Does this big boy give off any clues to further help you identify it? Do you have any personal stories to tell about Land Rovers of this vintage?
The Austin-Rover-Honda dealer my Dad worked at through the late 70s and 80s had one of these SII A Landies as a workshop vehicle (along with a 1975 XB Ford Falcon ute and a 1973 Morris Minor van). It was a fairly late one as the headlights were in the front guards rather than the grille. It was a dirty cream sort of colour, SWB, 4 cylinder that topped out at less than 100 km/h. We often used the Landie for trips to the family farm to gather firewood. It was noisy and uncomfortable but would go anywhere and I loved the sheer honesty of the design. In the mid-80s it was sold to one of Dad’s workmates, and soon after Dad did a gearbox overhaul on it, which I helped with. It was so easy to work on – just unbolt and remove the seats and floor and the gearbox was within easy reach. I still don’t know why I love the Land Rover, but I just do – comes back to that honesty of design I think. That and product integrity.
I drove a series 3 Landrover from brand new it belonged to our neighbour for his job top speed was 125kmh it was used for reading rural power meters around the Rodney and Waitemata districts and spent much of its time off road, it replaced the 66 Austin Gypsy that had done the job for 7 years without problems. A jeep had been tried for this job but it was too incapable on hilly ground and with no cab all the bookwork got wet that was ditched in favour of a 15cwt Chev pickup and he walked the difficult areas, My first memory of Stuarts vehicles was a series1 Landie which had replaced the Chev then the new Gypsy which he taught me to drive in I could slide that thing around on gravel roads at 12 Stuart didnt mind he taught me how and I was turning licence age 15 when the new SWB hardtop Landrover turned up it was cream and clean it was just as noisy as the Gypsy but it rode harder, the Gypsy had a steel body heavy gauge steel and a fibreglass roof shell over a pickup body it weighed lots it had a 2.2L austin light truck motor lever shift select 4WD HI Lo ratio and if you could doubledeclutch correctly you could range shift moving but and this was the killer at any point in time you can punch the yellow button and select 4WD in a landrover its the first course of action when the traction disappears but you need to stop completely to go back to 2WD as you come thru a gate on to any road and 4wd is unsuitable on any road in one of those if you read the manual you’d know. The Gypsy was unaffected by terrain of any kind it had capstan winches built into the front wheel hubs if the engine would run it would go there and a system of running the winch cables backwards was in the toolbox it could go the speed limit 55mph on gravel in 4WD and an quick back to 2wd did it for me,I prefer the Austin.
Simple and honest, just like tractors are simple and honest, which is why these old Landies have been so well respected.
With the top removed, I picture the typical ‘Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom’ episode–while Marlin Perkins is sitting in the Land Rover, Jim Fowler is assigned the task of circumcising a charging rhinoceros with a dull butter knife….
My thoughts exactly, I remember watching Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom siting on the floor at my grandparents house in front of the big console Zenith.
MoparDave is spot on: It seems all they ever did on Wild Kingdom was drug some animal & move it to a place it didn’t want to be. Jim did all the muscle work while Perkins supervised. But hey, you got to see cool critters from the comfort of your living room.
Is it possible for a short wheelbase Land Rover to winch itself up a tree, as in “The Gods Must be Crazy”? Or did they take the driveline out first?
Back in 1978, J.L.K Setright did a feature piece on the history of the Land-Rover for Car and Driver. Sadly, I recall little of it…except that the prototypes and the first couple years’ production had a center-mount driver’s seat (to avoid having to make LHD and RHD versions) and non-military uses were deemed to be mostly agricultural. Probably it was the impetus for Jeep offering agricultural attachments. Neither worked out, sadly.
I also recall that Popular Science did a road test of the Land-Rover in 1969, alongside the Jeep CJ (with a V6) and the new Blazer. The testers were unimpressed, one way or another, aside from the lack of any evolutionary development. They noted that even the Jeep, at least, had a fully-modern drivetrain (which stripped the gearbox).
Perhaps others recall more details. To me, this has always been in the background…a third-world utility tool, undeniably capable but – for those of us Stateside – out of memory and experience.
Jeep offered agricultural attachments immediately after the war, Land Rover didn’t start up until a few years later.
Series 2 is this model 2a has the headlights in the mudguards and the bigger diesel, Series 3 had a plastic grille and modern padded dashboard. NO jeep will follow a Landie off road this has been proved by military outfits world wide. The land rover has 3 point power takeoff for driven implements and hillside ability of 45 degrees driver and fuel tank uphill nothing else will do that especially the jeep.
My other memory of these was the series of Camel ad’s that featured a mustachioed mystery adventurer with his trusty Land Rover and his pack of Camels, these were on the back of almost every magazine that had any kind of….. ahem…..gentlemen’s interests articles……
I have the steel carry case the Camel trophy watches came in I’ll shoot it for the cohort my BIL was in Rover spares for a time his philosophy is a Landrover will get you anywhere but a Toyota will get you back, He and my sister are currently in Tanzania riding around in a Land cruiser.
My daily driver is a 1967 IIA SWB.
Fun piece of trivia Landrover dealers used to design obstacle courses to impress customers one in Melbourne was designed so nothing but a Landrover product could negotiate it people could try their other product on it there was a charge but nothing else ever made it around, rentals for beach use on Fraser Island are preffered to be Landies the servicing costs on sand and salt is less than anything else tried so far, my brother serviced them at the rental agency the aluminium panels dont rust like Toyotas do in Oz and other than rear brake pads nothing seems to wear out.
It was so long ago I can’t remember the exact model/series, but I remember riding in a Land Rover very much like this one back in the early 60’s. Same colour in fact.
Our parish priest had a large property out in the country that was remote and difficult to access, and he had a Land Rover to get him there and back. In the spring he would bring small groups of young boys out there to help with the maple sugar season. It was hard work, but also a lot of fun. We could also indulge in as much maple syrup and other sweet maple by-products as we could handle.
This is why I still remember one of the returns trips. I was sitting in the back of the Land Rover, which had a couple of bench seats along each side, facing each other. The unusual sideways seating position right over the rear wheels, the very stiff suspension, and an overdose of sugar meant I was very queasy and on the verge of throwing up the whole way.
To this day, I have an aversion to maple syrup!
Yup when one says Land Rover this is the image that appear in ones mind. Simple, mostly reliable and durable. Easy to work on with tools at hand. A version of this with a soft top resides in my neighborhood frequently during the summer months. Simple honest transport in desolate areas or jungles.
Series 1 Land Rovers make me think of “The Gods Must Be Crazy”, in which a shy scientist’s Land Rover is one of the funniest performers.
‘sBucko’ on YouTube cut together all the LR scenes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnU2DY9TRDs
The best known scene starts at 7:00. He’s giving a school teacher a ride to the village where she’ll be teaching, in a Land Rover with no brakes which can’t be restarted. It gets stuck fording a river. You don’t see the part where he tries to carry her out, drops her and she gets soaked. It cuts to where he’s getting the LR out of the river and she gets her wet clothes all snagged in the bush.
Great movie, with one of the funniest scenes I’ve ever seen!
The Land Rover was nicknamed the Anti-Christ no?
Yes, by the mechanic of course.
These are a bit like the curate’s egg- good in places! They don’t rust like Toyota Landcruisers, but have a few issues with reliablility. They are notorious for breaking rear axles for example. Think of the problems that first gen Discoverys have and many are carried over from these. There is a good reason that Somali warlords, Taliban insurgents and Australian bushies drive Toyota…good desert and dry country vehicles.
Read that theres a UK company that rebuilds ex army pre 67 models and fits US spec Iveco Derv engines for export to the USA. Perhaps they do not know about your pre 25 year law!.
Would that be the modern 3.0 ltr. FPT diesel engine that’s in the Iveco Daily vans and trucks ? Then I sure hope they reinforce the rest of the powertrain…
A few years ago there actually was an “Iveco Land Rover”, the Iveco Massif. Which was based on the Spanish Santana PS-10, and that 4×4 was clearly a Land Rover derivative itself.
More information and pictures: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iveco_Massif
I can’t help pin down the vintage but these super-anuated 4x4s (in all their guises) are still the mainstay vehicle of the Highlands and Islands, and they’re very common across the whole of Scotland.
I don’t know how much of their longievity is down to robust simple mechanicals and how much is down to a huge base of readily available spares, but these really are everywhere here. So much so that I’ve only bothered shooting one: a similar vintage, well patina-ed pickup body up at Dunnet Head Lighthouse (here on the cohort page for anyone interested).
As Bryce mentioned they’re fairly common sights in other rugged parts of the world (I loved seeing them clamber around Fraser Island…) – not to mention the British army’s (dwindling, but still large) fleet.
My impression has always been that (far from being simply a ” third-world utility tool”) the Land Rover is widely valued as a rugged, capable and reliable off road all-rounder all over the world, if – understandably – not in the US where the homegrown Jeep, and plethora of other cheap old 4x4s seem fill most of the same roles.
The state-owned, commercial-free British Broadcasting Corporation used to have an absolute prohibition on the use of brand names, but the Land-Rover, being a unique vehicle, caused them problems – it wasn’t a “saloon car”, let alone a “limousine” – how to describe it? In the end, someone came up with the description “field car”, as in “Her Majesty is reviewing the troops from the back of a field car”. Eventually, common sense prevailed, and “Land-Rover” it was.