Gary Pusey

The Enthusiast

“This particular Range Rover has been extensively saved at least twice before in its lifetime”

“It needs saving!” How many times has this immortal phrase caused you to hand over the readies to buy a Land Rover that is on its last legs? Or at least tempted you to do so? “It needs saving” is shorthand for what will inevitably turn out to be a lot of time, effort and money, to say nothing of blood, sweat and tears, before it is renovated, restored, and back on the road.

But whether you do the work yourself, or pay professionals to do some or all of it, there is nothing more satisfying than being the brave soul who took on the task, paid the bills and saved a piece of Land Rover history.

I confess that I have done it more times than I should have, usually with first-generation Range Rovers, and each time I swear it will be my last. But the lesson is never really learned, and sooner or later another car appears that “needs to be saved”. It happened to me again recently.

Someone sent me a link to a dealer’s website, which revealed a rather down-atheel 109 inch Stage 1 V8. I worked my way through the photographs that accompanied the listing, and while my head was telling me to log-off and go mow the lawn, my heart was reminding me that a Stage 1 had been on my bucket list for quite a while now, and this one had a Solihull factory registration number, which is another thing I am a sucker for.

My brain was registering the details in the photos, and already starting to tot-up the work required, and the likely costs, and why this wasn’t a good idea. But my heart was telling me that I had seen worse, and surely the bulkhead wasn’t really as bad as it looked? And it was a Stage 1, and – you’ve guessed – “it needed saving”.

I phoned a friend. And that’s how the brain ended up losing – yet again – because my pal and I decided to buy the car together. You know how the old sayings go: safety in numbers, and a problem shared is a problem halved…

We left a message on an out-of-hours answering machine and by the following morning we owned a Stage 1 V8.

Naturally, because “it needed to be saved” we hadn’t even bothered to go to view it. Good grief, how dopey does it get?

But when the car arrived on a trailer a few days later, and we got it up on the ramp for a good look and a prod and a poke, we were delighted to find a reasonably solid chassis, albeit one that had been patched-up in the past, and no absolute horrors. Or none that were visible, at least.

Within a day or two we had drawn up the list of parts we knew would be required, and scheduled some time for an autumn stripdown. One lesson I learned years ago is not to allow the first flush of enthusiasm after such an acquisition to prompt a hurried bout of disassembly; far better to wait and approach the job in a measured way, when time and funds allow the rebuild to get underway immediately, and momentum to be maintained.

I have to confess that there is already a very early Range Rover classic in the queue, currently stripped to the last rivet with restoration underway, so the Stage 1 will have to wait until the Range Rover has been saved again. I say again because this particular vehicle has been extensively saved at least twice before in its lifetime. These vehicles are now rapidly approaching their 50th birthdays, so multiple savings are par for the course. And then the phone rang again. In fact it rang three times, and three different people wanted to let us know that a certain short-wheelbase Land Rover had appeared on social media and was being possibly offered for sale. Now this is a very interesting Land Rover. A mid-1980s concept vehicle, one of one, that has been off the radar for a few years. As all the callers quite rightly said: “It needed saving”.

One of the informants kindly offered to drive to the vendor’s house that evening to inspect the car, and yet more phone calls confirmed the identity of the vehicle, and also revealed that it was in a pretty sad state. Photographs were taken and rushed to us by email, and it was immediately obvious that sad was a bit of an understatement.

This time, the head was starting to win the debate, despite the fact that the vehicle is undeniably very desirable and without a shadow of doubt “needs to be saved”. Nevertheless, the heart was not going to give up that easily and for several hours I had conversations with myself that put Gollum to shame.

The heart was winning by a whisker, and eventually an offer to buy the car was made – and instantly rejected! While the vendor knew exactly what the vehicle was, her view of its value in its present condition was just not the same as mine.

So on this occasion the head won and it will be someone else who has the pleasure of saving this particular Land Rover. This means we can focus our efforts on saving the Stage 1. Once the