Spotted this rare bird while walking the dogs in the neighborhood. 4WD Land Rovers are not an uncommon sight in the Pacific Northwest, being so capable on our rugged terrain (which was in fact claimed by the British long ago). Right hand drive is not so common here, and I’ve never seen a flatbed Land Rover. Maybe you can answer a few of my questions about it.
Tom Klockau gave us a proper CC on the Land Rover Series III, in its more usual Jeep-like form. Curved Triplex glass in the corners tells me this cab must have been factory-built. But Rover never built any flatbeds, did they? This bed is well made, nice and square and solid looking, but the exposed welds and simple fenders say it didn’t come from a factory.
That yellow diamond in the back window, its right hand drive and a small oddity I’ll get to in a minute all say this rig is originally from the Land Down Under.
Here’s a Series III Land Rover pickup from the web. Or should I say “ute”? For its bed is integral with its cab. Same cab as today’s find. Look again at the previous picture – there’s a patch down under behind the door where the pickup box must have been. I think today’s rig is a nicely done conversion, from ute to flatbed.
Is it a professional conversion or the work of a skillful owner? How much of a load can this flatbed carry?
The Series III interior is more modern and padded than the earlier version that had central gauges. But it still has sliding windows, not the posh windup kind.
Over 400,000 Series III Land Rovers were built from 1971 to 1985. The grille shape is the spotter’s way to tell it’s a Series III. I’m just guessing this is a ’74. Can you pin it down any more accurately?
One more thing puzzles me, that’s the auxiliary amber and clear lights, presumably parking lights and turn signals. Most of the Series III Land Rovers on the web have the clear lights above the amber ones. But the Australian ones I found are all the other way around, like this. Inquiring minds want to know why. Cheers!
44,40, Or Fight!
It’s so wonderful to see a real Land Rover, not some Chelsea Tractor.
Yeah! Actually it was “54′ 40 or fight”, which would have put most of BC into the USA. The British claimed the whole territory down to California at 42′ N latitude. In 1846 they settled on today’s USA-Canada boundary at 49′.
44′ 40 would have put the boundary somewhere between Salem and Eugene. Portland, BC anyone? 😉
Damn, that’s what I wanted and didn’t catch my error! And congratulations on being one of the few people who knows that forgotten moment in history. Prior to WWII, high school seniors were expected to know about it.
Land Rover did offer a factory chassis-cab, which is basically a complete truck without a bed or body mounted on its frame, behind the cab.
Any truck bed or body is possible, built by a professional company or “home-made”.
You could get it with no back to the cab and a canvas tilt, or a “truck cab” as in the featured Series 3. I don’t recall ever seeing pre 90/110 (later known as Defender) chassis cabs. The Series 3 ambulances look like they were built on a standard non-truck cab 109.
The Defenders were certainly common as a “hi-cap” pickup with a discrete bed and also available as a standard pickup/ute as pictured in the article.
I’m fairly sure I have seen cab chassis LR’s before, but at the same time there is a discolouration down the back corner of the cab that might suggest it is a conversion.
The flat tray is a typical style for here, built from a range of aluminium extrusions. The curious thing is there aren’t any hinge pins for dropside panels.
Cab chassis was a popular way to buy them either 88 or 109 wheelbase was available that way, I drove a SWB hardtop S3 new, very noisy with lots of gear whine for the first few thousand kms untill it bedded in comfort wasnt on the list of options. capability came free at the asking price.
Not definitive, but I can say there were certainly lots of cab-chassis with the factory curved windows around: there’s currently 5 such flatbeds for sale (from the ’60’s and ’70’s) on the local Gumtree site. As to the beds, I reckon it depended which State or even town you were in, as they’d be local and they vary a lot.
Almost no question it’s an Aussie (unique combo of RH drive and speedo in km’s), though quite why someone would smuggle it to the PNW isn’t obvious. Given the immediate familiarity of this car (and that number of ones randomly for sale now), I’m going for a factory job. Adding only the caveat that Landy bodies are essentially Mecccano sets available to arrange and re-arrange as one sees fit.
The upside down lights have an obvious explanation. Everyone just assumes they’ll swivel around to their rightful order when no longer travelling upside down. As your photo proves, this is a myth.
They used to assemble these and later the defender down here till 2015.single cabs and double cabs.2010-2015 models were offered A Turbo diesel engine from Hyundai.
Generally the Defender wasn’t assembled in Oz. JRA did put together some 6×6 for the army, Perentie if I recall correctly. Isuzu and Duratorq Ford was the engine, not Hyundai.
All true (although paradoxically, the Range Rover was assembled here), but when Payam says “down here”, he means less far than Down Under, namely, Iran.
It’s almost definitely an Australian market truck. The “goldenrod” paint was unique to Aussie Landrovers in the 70s and early 80s and the aluminum flatbed is typical of Australian work trucks. The cab is the standard Series II through Defender part and chassis cabs were available in many markets to suit local tastes for flatbeds over pickup boxes or for more specialized stuff like fire engines box bodies and so on.
Without doubt an Oz car, the tray is most likely much newer than the Landy. It was popular to fit wooden or steel custom made trays in the ’70s but extruded aluminium trays came much later. Very popular rigs in North Queensland in the day. This one looks very original.