Honest utility- and commercial vehicles of yesteryear always grab my attention. When visiting an event for classic British cars, I thoroughly check out the Land Rovers first, before moving on to the pavement-only type of automobiles. Four of them arrived on the scene.
The oldest was this 1984 Land Rover 110 Station Wagon.
The Land Rover 110 (that’s the wheelbase in inch) was introduced in 1983, it replaced the Land Rover Series III. The shorter Land Rover 90 (its wheelbase was actually 93 inch) arrived a year later.
It’s powered by a 3.9 liter Rover V8, sourced from a Land Rover Discovery.
Next is a 1992 Land Rover Defender 90. The Defender name was added from the 1991 model year onwards.
There’s a 2,495 cc 4-cylinder, direct injected diesel engine with a turbocharger and intercooler under this heavy-duty hood. The power unit is known as the 200 Tdi engine.
The Winchmax winch.
A British gentleman visited the show with his 1998 Land Rover Defender 110 Hard Top.
The blue, 20 years old Landy with its white steel rims and roof was my favorite of the quartet. Form follows function, all the way.
It’s powered by the 300 Tdi engine, an improved and updated version of the 200 Tdi, introduced in 1994. In 1998 the 300 Tdi was superseded by the inline-5 Td5 engine, yet still with 2.5 liter displacement.
The last one, a special treat, this 1994 Land Rover Defender 110 camper.
All set for a rough terrain camping trip.
One of the BF Goodrich All-Terrain tires.
The front differential and suspension.
The rear differential and the adjustable trailer hitch.
So far the Land Rover utility vehicles. The next article will focus on all kinds of other British rolling material.
Related reading, an in-depth Land Rover article by Roger Carr:
Love the snorkel. The truck still runs if the water is high enough to top off the cabin!
Is that an A-35 with Minilites showing its curvy posterior behind the blue one?
Judging by what’s visible in the background there will be some interesting vehicles to come! Keep it up Johannes.
A30 – small rear window, chromed front grille. (the front’s just visible two pics up).
and a Triumph Herald convertible.
And is that a Morris Oxford in the far background of the first picture?
The Brit show at the Gilmore Museum was celebrating the 70th anniversary of the creation of the Land Rover last year. There was quite a phalanx of old Landys in attendance, including some old enough to have the headlights mounted in the grill, rather than on the fenders. For whatever reason, I didn’t take any pix of them.
Nice pics of some awesome vehicles. A dumb question, though: what’s the purpose of the extra metal plating on the hood of that red Defender? To stand on while surveying the horizon for wildlife?
Interesting tidbit about Defender 90 and 110…
They were the last passenger vehicles in Europe to be produced and sold without airbags. However, the new EU pedestrian safety regulations in 2015 made it too expensive to reengineer the dashboard for airbags and the front end for higher pedestrian safety. The last one rolled off the production line in January 2016.
The 2018 special edition was sourced from older 90 chassis with frame-off restoration rather than brand new chassis as some claimed. Similar to what Nissan did with its 240Z relaunch programme in 1998.
Surely the Caterham 7 is still on sale, without airbags ?
Caterham is classified as a kit car since you assemble it yourself. If you don’t want the hassle of building it yourself, Caterham charges £2,500 or so to build it for you.
Same for Ariel Atom, too.
United Kingdom has different regulations than EU when it comes to classifying the vehicles and registering them for use on the public road. So the difference is there between Land Rover Defender, which had been build on the assembly lane and sold to the public as completed, and Caterham, which ships the boxes to you and wishes you the best in assemblying it yourself.
Actually, Caterham builds complete cars but they still offer self-assembly as an option – http://uk.caterhamcars.com/cars/self-assembly
I suspect that they may be using some sort of limited-production exemptions, like this – http://www.dft.gov.uk/vca/vehicletype/national-small-series.asp
Awesome Rovers. Glad to see them get some love on here. Maybe someday my LR3 can make it to one of these shows once it achieves vintage status. I don’t see any major puddles under them and I presume they drove there, so that’s a step in the right direction for all of them!
I agree with you, the 1998 one is my favorite. Just seems “clean” and well kept. On the red one, I’ve never heard of that winch brand. Must not be a US thing. Surprised he doesn’t have it covered, that synthetic line won’t be long for this world in the sun like that.
Winchmax is a UK brand.
Everything drove there…not only the Land Rovers. Except the trailer queen you see in the background of the 4th picture.
All in all it was a glorious mixture of the sounds of 4-cylinders (the Land Rover diesels included), 6-cylinders, 8 cylinders and 12-cylinders.