PAPER TRAIL JAMES TAYLOR CONTRIBUTOR

A recent chance find provided a breakthrough in the story behind James’ Range Rover

1991 RANGE ROVER VOGUE SE

Irecognised from the registration number (J180 OAC) of the Range Rover that I bought eight years ago that it had been registered by the Land Rover company. But I didn’t realise what an interesting tale it would turn out to tell. Let me back-track a little.

Land Rover planned to introduce the air suspension that it was developing for the Range Rover in autumn 1991 on the 1992 models. The press event was set up for late September, the pilot-production build began and the global launch was set for the Tokyo Motor Show in October. Then the air suspension software failed its reliability sign-off in June, the whole launch was cancelled and more than 100 Range Rovers had their air springs removed and replaced by coils.

Looking around mine prior to restoration, I found some odd features. Wires had been cut and taped up; the chassis had air suspension mounting brackets; and the front brake pipe runs were of the air suspension type. I asked a friend at Land Rover if he could find my vehicle’s build sheet, and what came back confirmed that it was a pilot production model that had been built with air suspension.

There was another odd feature – it had a pair of reading lights fitted for the rearseat passengers. Further enquires over time flushed out memories of a similar vehicle being on the factory’s VIP transport fleet for a while; the reading lights would have been added so that VIPS could work in the back seat while being ferried from one meeting to the next.

That was all I knew about it for a very long time. And then, a couple of months ago, a friend came across another Range Rover that had once had air suspension – and its registration number – J181 OAC – was right next to mine.

I went to look at it and sure enough it had clearly been built with air suspension, and still had the control switches for the system, which had been removed from mine. It didn’t look in bad nick, either, and the owner could have been persuaded to sell – but I resisted temptation because I plan to stay married. Seeing this second vehicle provided physical confirmation of the story that there had been several pilot-production vehicles in 1991 with air suspension. So I decided to look at the records of Land Rover-owned vehicles on my next visit to the archive at Gaydon.

And there was another big piece of the jigsaw puzzle – 16 pilotproduction Range Rovers had been allocated to the press garage, no doubt to be prepped as the press launch fleet. They were registered J173 OAC to J188 OAC in July 1991, which was actually after the launch had been cancelled.

So now I have most of the story. My Range Rover was built in June 1991 as a pilot-production 1992spec Vogue SE with air suspension. It went to the press garage to become part of the press fleet, but the launch was cancelled almost immediately and so it sat around with several others until the company had decided what to do with it. The decision was to remove the air suspension and to use it for a year on the VIP Transport fleet, after which it could legitimately be sold on as second-hand.

There’s more to find out, I’m sure. It’s only taken eight years to get this far so I’ll persevere.

car The build record shows that James’ was a product development vehicle before its air suspension was removed.

We are not alone – sister pre-production car J181 OAC.

James has recently discovered that his Range Rover was a VIP – well, it shuttled VIPS around, anyway.

… but the wires from it go nowhere; they’ve been cut off at some point.

This plug once actually had a function…