BOGUS ROVERS
How to spot a fake military Land Rover
IF YOU are a member of EMLRA, the ExMilitary Land Rover Association, or a peruser of the ARRSE, the Army Rumour Service web community, the term Walt as used in a military context should be familiar to you. A truncation of Walter Mitty, the fictional daydreamer created by American author and cartoonist James Thurber in 1939, the term is used in a military context to describe anyone or anything which is not quite what it purports to be.
Walts have been around the military Land Rover scene for longer than I have been writing on this topic, but despite there now being an incredibly wide rage of reliable reference sources available to anyone wishing to display a vehicle at Land Rover or Living History shows it appears the fantasy exhibit problem is getting worse rather than better. Thirty years ago when I penned my first monthly article on military Land Rovers, which back in 1987 we thought would be a one-off or three part series at best, there were pitifully few print reference sources available to consult and the internet was not yet available for public commercial use, so it was not surprising that some probably wellmeaning restorers were getting some things slightly wrong. Today, there is no real excuse.
This summer I spent a few days at both the War & Peace Revival and Military Odyssey living history events, held in late July and late August respectively in Kent, and I was pretty appalled at some of the display exhibits which a minority of owners were passing off to the general public as being authentic. Now I do appreciate that it is their vehicle and if they want to dress it up like a proverbial tinker’s cart with every bit of military surplus on the market that is their right. However, I do wish they would indulge in some of their fantasies in the privacy of their back yards rather than displaying them as a piece of living history when in reality they are fictitious creations only loosely based on the real thing.
The one vehicle which really triggered my decision to pen this little rant, a vehicle which I have deliberately not focussed on here to avoid accusations of pillorying an individual, was one purporting to be a specific Land Rover that served in Gulf War One. When I first saw it I had to pinch myself to make sure I was not seeing things, as I knew from the distinctive markings that I had photographed that particular One Ten out in Saudi Arabia in January 1991 just prior to the war starting. Only by 2017 it had transformed into a Series III 109. In emoji-speak, insert double facepalm icon!
Looking around the shows, I began to wonder if the restored military Land Rover circuit might now own more SAS Desert Patrol Vehicles than the Special Air Service ever did, as it seems everywhere one looked there was another machine gun-armed coilsprung ‘Pinky’. Often these Rovers being passed off as Gulf War One-spec were in a colour scheme that bore little in common with the genuine DPVS I have seen, either in photos taken by veterans at the time or in the flesh shortly after their 1991 excursion into the sandpit, and some did not even have the correct engine.
Just like the original batch of Series IIA
Pink Panther SAS Land Rovers from the 1960s, most of the SAS Desert Patrol Vehicles from the mid-80s were broken up prior to disposal. There are a handful of genuine OneTen DPVS still in existence, including three official museum examples that I am aware of, plus a couple of early restorations of accident-damaged cast-offs, but by far the majority of show vehicles started off as something else onto which components, some genuine and some copied, have been bolted on to create an illusion.
The late-90s Wolf, that is the Truck Utility Light or Truck Utility Medium Higher specification, as currently in service with UK armed forces, is another subject which is well represented by clones built on earlier models of both Defender and pre-defender Land Rover. Some of these have been very well done, but there are a few right mingers out there too, often being misrepresented as the real thing but occasionally an owner with integrity will explain that their vehicle is merely a replica and not the real thing.
One very good Wolf copy which I spotted at Military Odyssey was being displayed by a group of Ferret owners. In addition to their beloved ex-army 4x4 armoured cars some of the guys also own ex-military Land Rovers, ranging from Series I through to genuine Wolf, and they brought these to Kent as well.
Wolf replica G141 UMW was one of the Land Rovers displayed with the Ferrets but although at first glance it looked very like a TUM HS from the late 1990s, the original registration plate dates it to 1989/90 as does its **KJ** military registration. I sought out current owner Mark Burley and, before identifying myself, asked him if it was a genuine Wolf.
“It’s not,” said Mark, and when I then explained my interest he continued: “The vehicle’s previous owner was formerly a serving soldier in the British Army. He had done a tour of The Gulf, had come out, and acquired a One Ten V8 GS [General Service] Land Rover and set about making it into a Wolf copy. He acquired all the right bits for it, minus the chassis, axles and running gear.
“What you see is a good representation of a Wolf Land Rover. The chassis and axles are about the only things externally that a nonexpert could spot to tell the difference; if you look at the back of the chassis it has extra strengthening and if you look underneath it has the Salisbury rear axle, whereas the Wolf Land Rover axle has some guards on the bottom of it, and then you’ve got the smaller rear differential casing. If I’m right, the changes have been taken from the P38A Range Rover and adapted from that.”
Mark is spot-on about that as in the mid-90s, just before Land Rover was awarded the main Wolf contract, Solihull’s Government & Military Operations team explained to me how engineers had borrowed the new generation computer design programme conceived for the P38A (the Range Rover model which replaced the Classic) and used it to redesign the Wolf 1 prototype batch to increase torsional strength and rollover survivability.
Back to Mark’s story. “When I acquired the vehicle last year, its body was pretty rough. It had come up for sale five years ago and I tried to buy it then but I missed out. Then it came up for sale again last year and although bodywise it was rough, all the parts were there.
“The only reason I bought it rather than a proper Wolf is because where I live in London we have the Low Emission Zone and I can’t take a diesel in there. As I wouldn’t be able to drive a Wolf, for me a replica was the best compromise. I had a 3.5-litre V8 which basically looked like a Wolf from the outside.”
Mark’s hard top Wolf 110 replica on the Ferret owners’ stand at Military Odyssey was parked up alongside a more original soft top Wolf 110, which allowed interested show visitors to compare the external differences, such as rear crossmember and rear axle. What one must never forget, however, is that Defenders are like Trigger’s Broom as most parts are interchangeable.
“I was pretty appalled at some of the exhibits passed off as being authentic”