One of three original Land Rovers found in garden

There are barn finds and then there are spectacular barn finds. In 2016, one of the three original Land Rovers used to launch the brand at the Amsterdam motor show in 1948 was found in a garden near the Solihull factory where it was built.

The company trotted it out to pay homage to its 70-year history, promising to restore the brute back to spec. After much work and careful planning, it is ready to turn a wheel on U.K. soil once again.

Restoration work began last year, undertaken by a team of experts at Land Rover Classic at its Classic Works facility in Coventry. Interesting discoveries during the work included an original King George V sixpence coin from 1943 that had been deliberately left under the galvanized capping of the rear tub as a hidden memento.

The team stripped the vehicle down to its bare chassis and began a painstaking process of testing and checking which components could be reused and rebuilt. Some parts, such as the rear axle, were X-rayed and depth-tested to determine their fitness.

For parts that needed to be replaced or had been removed over the vehicle’s life, the team used the archive of original drawings kept by Land Rover Classic, plus access to other surviving pre-production Land Rovers. These tech illustrations helped to restore the original routing and mounting of the exhaust, the brass wheel hubs, the gearbox, and transfer box.

The original badge was also missing, so the team used a photograph of a Land Rover at the 1948 Amsterdam Motor Show to replicate a new one. Driving.ca