BRAVE THOM

MY WIFE often tells me that I love my Land Rovers too much. I own a Defender 90 300Tdi and a Series III LWB petrol, so she probably has a point. But I do I love them enough to deliberately put my life at risk? I doubt it. Yet your roving reporter Thom Westcott does just that, every month.

I marvel at her exploits in the most dangerous corners of the world. Last month (LRM July) she was in the middle of the war zone in Iraq, in danger of being caught by sniper fire, yet she insisted her driver should stop so that she could interview the driver of a Land Rover ambulance in Mosul.

How refreshing it is to read about Land Rovers that really make a difference; ones that probably save lives on a daily basis. It makes such a change from reading about ridiculous blinged-up Defenders turned into expensive gin palaces at a the whim of folk with more money than sense.

Sadly, these days style (or some car designer’s apology for it) takes precedence over substance. It is the exact opposite of how Land Rovers were perceived as little as ten years ago. What has gone wrong in the last decade I don’t know, but what I do know is it isn’t for the better.

In the Letters page in the last issue, Carl Brightman wrote that we should all learn to move with the times and embrace the modern generation of Land Rovers, as designed by Gerry Mcgovern and friends. I totally disagree. I’d like to see Mr Mcgovern and his cronies spend a week or two doing the same job as your brave correspondent, Thom Westcott. Once they’d witnessed no-nonsense Defender workhorses doing the sort of dirty jobs they were intended for, perhaps we’d get a lot less of the Evoque/velar nonsense.

Keep up the good work, Thom. You are an inspiration to us all.