What’s in a name
How the new vehicle came to get its name has been the subject of many theories and tales over the years, and it can be difficult to determine truth from myth. Spencer Wilks owned a house on the Hebridean Isle of Islay and had taken various Rover vehicles there, including a P2 car with raised suspension to negotiate the island’s rutted tracks. In August 2015, in the run-up to the end of Defender production, JLR held a media event on Islay with a selection of Defenders and Series Land Rovers. In the accompanying press release, Nick Wilks was quoted as saying “The gamekeeper, Iain Fraser, commented once that the special Rover must be a Land Rover and my father remembered this when it came to naming the new vehicle.” John Smith has a version of this story in his book, although he suggests that what Iain Fraser actually said was that Spencer “needed a proper ‘land’ Rover.”
In another version of events, James Taylor in his book Land Rover – 65 Years of the 4x4 Workhorse, describes a conversation that apparently took place between Spencer and his son Thomas and nephew Richard. They were shooting together on Islay and had stopped for lunch. Spencer mentioned the difficulty the company was having in coming up with a name for the new vehicle, and Richard suggested ‘Roverlander’. This was rejected as being too similar to the name of the manufacturer of the Jeep, Willys Overland, and it was then that Thomas Wilks proposed ‘Landrover’, and so history was made. Whichever of the stories is correct, the name was changed to ‘Land-rover’ before production began, and then again to ‘Land Rover’ without the hyphen from 1978 onwards.
Islay was also used as an unofficial testing ground for the company’s vehicles for many years, and the family connection with the island persists to this day. The Kilchoman distillery on the island is owned by Anthony and Kathy Wills, and Kathy is Spencer’s great-granddaughter. The distillery’s signwritten Defender is used for promotional tours throughout the UK and Continental Europe.