Britain’s Got Talent
Forget supercars – the three stunning Land Rovers featured here would blow them out of the water. And you know what? These talented owners did the work themselves
We uncover three stunning Land Rovers that were all built by their owners – DIY excellence at its finest
IN THESE days of expensive bling and instant gratification, it’s good to know that good old British workmanship and hard graft is still alive and kicking among Land Rover owners. You don’t have to spend a fortune on garage hours to achieve a green oval masterpiece, either.
You don’t believe me? Well check out the creations of these three LRM readers and their machines. Andy, Benjamin and Alisdair aren’t even trained mechanics, but with some research, modest workshop skills and evenings and weekends spent in their garages, they achieved something very, very special.
As Alisdair so succinctly puts it: Land Rovers are just nuts, bolts and bits of metal. There’s nothing too complicated if you really want to achieve DIY excellence.
The Defender Td5, Discovery 1 and Series I on the following pages are very different vehicles, spanning more than half a century of Land Rover history. But what they have in common is a shared love of the green oval and engineering excellence. They really are that good.
But don’t just take my word for it. Turn the page and read on . . .
EVERY SECONDHAND car has a history, but Andy Bacon’s 1997 Discovery is more colourful than most, having once been owned by a drug dealer and used in a ram raid. Its next owner used it as a weekend off-roader.
But all Land Rovers are capable of redemption and this particular one got a second chance thanks to the part it played in finding Andy a wife – or, to be exact, helping his wife Lesley-anne find him. Confused? I’d better explain . . . One day in May 2014, Lesley-anne was scrolling through Facebook when the ‘People You May Know’ section featured Andy and a very pristine Td5 Disco 2. “The only other Discovery I’d ever seen was my mate Ben’s, but that was always covered in mud,” she says.
“Because of that, I added Andy as a friend. After all, I had nothing to lose. The next day he messaged me, we talked for ages and then went out that night. We have been together ever since.”
Andy, 37, takes up the story: “In February 2016, Ben called to say he was selling his Discovery 1 and he was giving us first refusal as it played a part in getting us together. How could I refuse? Besides, we were moving house at the time and it came in useful.
“It was just a good workhorse, but a few weeks later we decided to get married and Lesley-anne said she wanted it to
be our wedding car. I had a year to turn it into something decent. I knew it would be a challenge, but I was determined to do it.
“Ben had used it for off-roading at pay and play sites. The only straight panels were the doors and roof. I replaced all the others – new Genuine front wings, a secondhand bonnet and rear quarter panels. It had 140,000 miles on the clock, but wasn’t as badly rusted as most Discoverys of that age. I did some work on the front inner wings, footwells and outer sills, but the boot floor was mint and the chassis was perfect.”
So, too, was the original 300Tdi engine and R380 manual gearbox. But Andy rebuilt the turbo, axles and propshafts and replaced many of the bearings and seals. To get a bit more performance from the engine, he fitted a straightthrough stainless exhaust system, an aluminium radiator, a larger intercooler, silicone hoses, electric cooling fan and bigger header tank. To stop it, he fitted the biggest standard Land Rover front brakes that would fit – namely Defender 130 items, with vented discs and jumbo calipers.
But the devil is in the detail in Andy’s Discovery and his tasteful additions have transformed it into a real head turner. He spent most of his 20s and early 30s as a petrolhead boy racer, driving Ford RSS and rally cars, so he treated the exterior to a coat of Ford Imperial Blue, as used on RS Escorts. “It’s a good colour that really pops in the sun and changes from light blue to purple, depending on the light,” he tells me.
Other external touches include a Gulf-spec stainless mesh grille, an Australian lipped ‘bug-deflector’ bonnet and a high-level brake light fitted in a rear roof spoiler, that he imported from Norway. All were Genuine Land Rover items, originally fitted in overseas markets. He found them by spending hours scouring the parts catalogues. The snorkel is a Mantec original, as used on Camel Trophy Discoverys from the early 1990s.
Inside, the cabin has been transformed with the generous but tasteful application of carbon fibre to replace the rubber trim. His mother made the hand-stitched leather steering wheel cover and Union Jack cubby box cover. The leather gear knobs were from a Disco 2 Adventure special edition.
Although Andy’s Discovery is a very rare late three-door, he managed to get leather electric seats from a five-door ES model to fit, and function. On top of the dash, as a homage to his rallying days, he’s fitted a pod of four gauges – oil temperature, oil pressure, turbo boost and battery voltage – perhaps not essential on a 300Tdi, but they do look good.
The original wheels were replaced by Raptor 4x4 offset alloys, shod with Cooper Discover ST Max tyres – a brand that Andy and Lesley-anne obviously love, because they had the tread pattern replicated on their wedding rings.
Yes, Andy got the car finished in time for the wedding, in July last year – and didn’t it look a treat!
LIKE ANDY Bacon and his Disco, Benjamin Edwards is a reformed boy racer who has progressed to Land Rovers – and the end result is this stunning red Defender 110.
“My favourite car used to be the Ford Fiesta Red edition and I missed it so much I painted my Landy the same colour - Ford Race Red and Panther Black roof - plus I wanted a colour that I knew no one else would have,” he explains.
This is 22-year-old Benjamin’s first example of Solihull’s finest. “My dad had Discoverys when I was younger and I always wanted a Land Rover – plus I wanted a car that Dad and I could work on and enjoy, that I could also tow with and I could still tweak a bit.
“I bought it in January 2016. I wanted a Td5 engine because it could be tuned. I picked her up in the dark, the alarm didn’t work and nor did the temperature gauge, but the price was right and I didn’t care – I had my Defender!”
In the cold light of day, the twin cab 110 didn’t look any better. “She was leaking oil and the rear crossmember was in very bad shape. I hadn’t noticed that in the dark, but in daylight I could see the chassis was basically shot and someone had even tried repairing it with fibreglass at some stage,” says Benjamin.
“There was a big dent in the front passenger wing and the seats were shot, too. She had been fitted with a Discovery ECU at some stage, which affected the performance. The front brakes needed replacing and when I took her for a
drive the wheels were wobbling at 50 mph.
“There had been five or six previous owners and at least one of them was a farmer, because it stank of cow muck. Even after I had pressure-washed it inside and out I was still finding bits of hay and old spent cartridges.
“For the first few days I felt terrible, because I knew it was going to cost me a lot of money to put right, and a couple of times I put it up for sale, but both times I took it off again because I couldn’t bear to part with it. By then my girlfriend India and I had so many happy memories of holidays and adventures in it, I knew I couldn’t part with it.”
Benjamin wasn’t content to just fix the many faults. He also decided to convert the twin cab into a full rear body with sliding drawer system and dog cage for the couple’s two working cocker spaniels, Oscar and Bats.
The chassis was replaced with a new galvanised frame by Matthew Standing at Alpine Restorations and all the faults were sorted, with long hours spent in the workshop. On the bright side, the Td5 engine was a perfect runner, but it wasn’t powerful enough for the ex-boy racer, so he got to work.
“I had done a few bits, like taking out the main silencer and replacing the EGR valve, but I wanted more power. I contacted Dan Matthew at Storm Tuning and he got to work. After the first remap I had a lot of black smoke and it was discovered there was a hole in the intercooler, so I bought an uprated Serek Motorsport one, put it on and took it back to Dan for some extra tweaking. Flipping heck, does she go now! I still get surprised at the difference it has made.
“There’s a very steep hill near me with multiple corners that you have to slow down for. She used to struggle up this hill, only ever managing 30 mph at best. Now she cruises easily up to the 40 mph speed limit, with much more to give.
“I have a Mastercraft X1 waterski boat with a 5.7-litre Corvette V8 engine in it that weighs 2.2 tonnes and now the Defender is tuned it makes towing so much easier, whether it is taking the boat out of the water or getting to and from the lake – a massive improvement and I still get 30 mpg out of her on a good run.”
The list of upgrades Benjamin has made is too long to list here, but what is sure is that this talented young man has transformed a tired farm hack into a brilliant work of automotive art.
REGULAR READERS of LRM will know Alisdair, our talented photographer and a true Land Rover aficionado with a special passion for Range Rover Classics. But until a year ago nobody – including Alisdair – realised he had any talent for restoration.
“I really didn’t know anything about Series Is or restorations until I bought it,” he says. “I was prepared for a very steep learning curve.”
Alisdair admits that he’d never really considered buying a Series I apart from the vague notion that it was something he might consider one day. But that all changed last year when a very special 1957 88-inch model suddenly became available.
“I’d known it since 1997 when I was doing my photography degree and included it in my portfolio,” he says. “Since then I’d become friends with its owner and, when he decided to sell, he wanted me to have it.”
The owner had in fact been offered a good price for it by a company that wanted to do a full restoration so that it looked as though it had just come out of the factory, but that wasn’t what he wanted.
“He didn’t want it ending up with straight panels and pristine paintwork, he wanted it left in character – and he knew I would do just that,” says Alisdair.
The vehicle was totally original, but it hadn’t moved since 2000 and had been stood outside, facing the worse that the wet Cumbrian winters could throw at it. But the good news was it was totally original and had only covered 26,000 miles.
“I knew nothing about Series Is, so I did a lot of research. I also spent a day with Ed Evans, LRM’S Technical Editor, so he could give it the once over. He confirmed that the engine turned over, and if we hadn’t run out of time he would have got it running. That was a big relief.”
Once he’d got it back home in Staffordshire, Alisdair recruited good friend and Land rover guru James Holmes to help him restore it. “We got it up on the ramp, took the body off, and worked from the back to the front,” he says.
“The back of the chassis was badly rusted, so we cut it off behind the rear shock mounts. James is a fantastic welder and it’s impossible to see the repairs he made. Afterwards we painted the chassis with half-matt paint so that it didn’t look too new. I wanted it to look like it had been painted about 25 years ago.”
The bulkhead was completely shot and we had to replace it with a new one, from Dunsfold. The radiator panel was rusted away at the bottom, but James managed to repair that. The rest of the panels are original. “The hardest part was cleaning off the quarter-inch layer of tree sap that covered the whole vehicle after standing outside and not being washed for 25 years.”
Alisdair’s approach was to only replace items that were completely shot. This included the hood, which was new but made to original factory spec. “When we fitted it, the car seemed to come back to life,” he says.
A lot of seals were also replaced, as well as the steering swivels, which unfortunately had rusted beyond repair. The brake drums are original, as are the axles, but all were stripped and rebuilt.
Maintaining originality was vital, so Alisdair has retained the 1957 seats, even though the horsehair stuffing is bursting out in places. For the sake of comfort, he says he may consider fitting new ones in the future, but he still won’t throw away the old ones.
The restoration took a year, which included time waiting for parts to arrive. Throughout the process, Alisdair and James stuck to the original plan, and were successful in ensuring that the panels retained the patina – and hence character – of age.
Today, Alisdair uses it sparingly – after all, he wants to make sure it lasts another 60 years – but it’s ideal for a 20 mile run into the countryside on a sunny afternoon, or perhaps going for a picnic with the wife. “It’s my me-time car,” he explains.
It’s a cracking restoration, but one that Alisdair is eager to point out can be done by anyone.
“I knew nothing about restorations, but I did my research and soon learned. If I can do it, anyone can – after all it’s just nuts and bolt and metal. There is nothing for anyone to be afraid of.”
You don’t have to be a professional, nor do you have to spend a lot of money, to restore or create the Land Rover of your dreams – as the three restorations in this feature prove. Yes, you can do it too!