Festival to celebrate 70 years of the Land Rover
AFESTIVAL dedicated to the classic Land Rover is to be held in the Midlands to celebrate the iconic brand’s 70th anniversary.
The Land Rover Festival will be held in Solihull from June 22-24 and give fans a chance to see the vintage cars which made the Midland brand so famous.
The festival will celebrate the millions of Land Rover cars that have been produced at the nearby Lode Lane plant over the years.
Solihull business investment district (BID) director Melanie Palmer said: “We are thrilled to be working with Jaguar Land Rover to bring an amazing community experience to the people of Solihull and beyond.
“There will be lots of surprises and activities for everyone to enjoy, including off-road demonstrations for visitors to understand how these iconic vehicles handle challenging terrains.”
The Land Rover was launched by the Rover Company in 1948 and granted a Royal Warrant by King George VI in 1951.
The design for the original vehicle by Maurice Wilks dates to 1947.
Wilks, was chief designer at the Rover Company, and came up with the design on his farm in Newborough, Anglesey, in conjunction with his brother Spencer, who was the managing director of Rover.
The design was influenced by the American Willys Jeep and indeed the prototype was built on a Jeep chassis and axles.
The early choice of colour was dictated by military surplus supplies of aircraft cockpit paint, so early vehicles only came in various shades of light green.
Land Rover as a stand-alone company has existed since 1978.
Prior to this, it was a product line of the Rover Company which was subsequently absorbed into the Rover-Triumph division of the British Leyland Motor Corporation (BL) following Leyland Motor Corporation’s takeover of Rover in 1967.
The ongoing commercial success of the original Land Rover series models, and latterly the Range Rover in the 1970s in the midst of BL’s business troubles, prompted the establishment of a separate Land Rover company which ultimately became part of the JLR company owned by Tata today.
The last Defender rolled off the production lines in January 2016 only for the company to announce this year that it was bringing it back with 150 limited edition V8 models for the 70th anniversary.