Patina or not?

June’s issue of LRM will go down in the annals of publishing as the Patina Special, with Philip Bashall (Dunsfold Diaries) and Land Rover themselves (restoration of R07) unable to sleep at night because they can’t decide what level of patina to retain on historic Land Rovers.

I can tell them worry not and sleep peacefully, because the vast majority of Land Rover enthusiasts really don’t mind. Regarding R07, as long as you don’t stick a V8 engine under the bonnet and take it trialling, I can’t see anybody being too fussed either way.

If my life depended on making a decision either way, I think I would err on the side of full restoration, simply because I would like to see what the vehicle looked like when it was unveiled to the world at the Amsterdam Motor Show in 1948. Looking beaten up after 70 years of abuse isn’t so attractive, I’d argue.

To take the patina argument to its ultimate conclusion, if you found a rare Land Rover in a corner of a field with a chassis that had rusted away to next to nothing, should you preserve it like that? Of course not. But, like I say, each to their own. We all have our own views and nobody is right or wrong.

Originality isn’t everything. The whole Land Rover movement is based upon individuality, because no vehicle offers such opportunities to modify it to your own taste. And long may it remain so. Paul Hammond Cirencester