BORN TO BE WILD
Dave Phillips says it’s cruel to restrict Land Rovers to city streets. Can he be serious?
I’VE JUST returned from an afternoon’s greenlaning with my neighbour, Nicola, in her Range Rover Evoque. It is ideal for life in the countryside, especially as Nicola shares her home with Molly, a large but very gentle Rottweiler. Molly is a great pal of my own dog, Billy, so I suggested a trip to the local woods so they could go for a run together. It was also a very last chance to drive a local byway, which soon closes for the winter.
Nicola appeared in LRM a year or two ago, taking part in a gruelling drive across Africa in a workhorse Defender, for charity. Driving her Evoque down a greenlane wasn’t quite so challenging, but great fun all the same, she decided. She enjoyed getting her wheels muddy.
To me there’s something cruel about owning a Land Rover and never taking it off tarmac. Every Land Rover ever built was designed to be best in its class off-road, so it seems a shame to restrict them to paved roads. It’s a bit like keeping a magnificent wild animal like a tiger in a cage – plain wrong, in my opinion.
It’s amazing just how many Land Rovers there are out there that have never seen anything but city streets. Even in the very heart of the most urban environment on the planet – New York – Land Rovers are commonplace. Last month I mentioned how Debbie, my friend from 34 years ago, had got back in touch thanks to the power of the internet. Well, since then Debbie has been sending me snapshots she’s taken on her phone of the many Land Rovers – and especially Range Rovers – that prowl the canyon-like streets between the skyscrapers around her home in Manhatten.
It is often suggested that all those fourth-generation L405 Range Rovers costing six-figure sums have gone mainly to oil-rich Arabs and Russians, and the new billionaires of China, but judging from Debbie’s photos just as many have ended up with the wealthy players on Wall Street. There’s a fair smattering of L322s, Range Rover Sports and Discovery 4s, too (the latter are badged LR4 in the US).
I’m delighted to report that by the time you read this Debbie will be paying a flying visit to the UK for the first time since 1983, and getting a taste of proper Land Rovers. It is going to be a bit of a culture shock for her, but I have eased the transition by fitting USB adaptors for the cigar sockets on my 33-year-old Ninety and 21-year-old Discovery 1. At least she will have somewhere to plug in her ipad.
The Ninety had been minus its cigar socket and hazard warning lights since the wiring crisis I mentioned last month, in which my mechanic mate Norfolk Nigel had uncovered a bewildering tangle of electrical bodge-ups and wiring cul-desacs concealed behind the dash. This month I drove over to his workshop at Horningtoft, near Fakenham, so that he could finish off the job of tidying it up and getting everything working again.
There were some horrors to be found, including some part-melted wires that must have been very close to setting the lot ablaze at some time in the past. Meanwhile, a faulty cigar lighter was causing the short circuit that was blowing the fuse for both that and the hazard warning light. A replacement cigar lighter
from Britpart cost all of £3 and everything is now working fine.
The Ninety has obviously led a long and colourful life – part of which has been slowly revealing itself in recent months. It all started earlier in the summer when, in certain lights, you could just about make out ghostly signwriting visible beneath the blue paintwork on the hard top’s side panels. Now, it is quite plain, revealing that the vehicle was once the workhorse of a building contractor who specialised (among other things) on Grade II listed building work, plumbing, plastering… in fact you name it, he did it. That owner was obviously as versatile as the vehicle he drove.
It is all part of the Ninety’s history, so do I leave it or respray it? I guess the wording will get stronger as the paintwork ages and fades further, so I guess I will opt for the latter course.
Meanwhile, I received a brand-new Defender the other day. Remember back in August when I wrote admiringly about the tasty Western Power Defenders that turned up outside my house after a bungling building contractor cut through the village’s mains supply? Well, Western Power were obviously pleased about what I wrote, because one of their staff, who just happens to be an LRM reader, turned up on my doorstep with a present for me – an Oxford diecast 1:72 model of a Western Power Defender 110. What a lovely surprise.
That joins my collection of assorted Land Rover memorabilia, which includes several more diecast models I have accumulated over the years, as well as all sorts of other stuff ranging from a Land Rover clock to mugs and framed pictures and cartoons.
My favourites, though, are my collection of mugs and prints by that talented Cumbria artist, Alex Clark. She really has the knack of capturing the spirit of old Land Rovers in her watercolours, so I have several examples of her work hanging on the walls of my cottage. In fact, I admire her work so much that a couple of years ago I tried to persuade her to be interviewed by LRM for a special feature highlighting her skills.
Sadly, Alex didn’t want any publicity about her automotive masterpieces, because she had just had a nasty experience with Volkswagen. The car giants had threatened to sue the artist because she had painted a battered old VW campervan being used as a chicken coop. The humourless Germans reckoned that her artwork portrayed their company in a derogatory way and insisted that she destroyed all the prints she’d had made at great expense. Talk about heavy-handed!
Unfortunately, because of that incident, Alex shied away from any publicity about her Land Rover images, just in case Jaguar Land Rover took the same bullying stance. I tried reassuring her that Land Rover wasn’t that sort of company, but she didn’t want to risk it. I believe she now avoids portraying vehicles of any kind and sticks to animals and flowers. It’s a great loss for Land Rover enthusiasts and such a shame. All the same, do check out her work. Go to alexclarkart.co.uk.