Built to toil
Dave loves Land Rovers that work hard for their living – especially when they’re more than half a century old and still putting in a shift down on the farm
MY highlight this month has to be my first trip back to my home county of Norfolk since July. And the highlight of the highlight was meeting up with workshop legend Richard Hall, owner of the Norfolk Garage that he writes about every month in LRM. He’s a very clever man – an Oxbridge historian, no less – and smart enough to abandon a lucrative career as a top accountant and company director to follow his love of spannering leaf-sprung Land Rovers.
You can read about this fascinating interview elsewhere in this issue (see page 72), so I’ll say no more about it here, but I couldn’t help noticing a muddy Series IIA pick-up parked outside his garage, complete with Ifor Williams aluminium canopy. It looked like a farmer’s working vehicle and it was. Nothing special about that, I can hear you say, but this was a 1964 Land Rover.
To put this into perspective, in 1973 I bought my first car: a 1.5 Ford Cortina, which set me back £80. That car – BEB 339B – had rolled off the production line in 1964, the very same year that this farmer’s Series IIA was first registered. The big difference is that the Cortina was scrapped 45 years ago, while the Land Rover is still working hard for its living.
I would rather see older Land Rovers put to work than preserved by collectors. These vehicles weren’t built to be polished to within an inch of their lives and only brought out on dry, sunny days. They were built to toil.
I’ve met several farmers over the years still driving their leaf-sprung Land Rovers – and you can see why. These no-frills vehicles do exactly what’s required of them with minimum fuss and they are simple to fix on the rare occasions that they go wrong. Better still, parts are cheap. This is exactly what farmers require from their machinery.
Sure, they’re slow. But if you’re a farmer using your Land Rover to drive around your fields and local lanes, they’re more than fast enough. And if you want them faster still,
there are guys like Richard Hall who can convert them to ex-discovery Tdi power at a sensible price.
Back in Northamptonshire, my farming mate Martyn has owned nothing but Land Rovers since he was a teenager. He’s in his 50s now and has driven either Series or Defender models all his adult life, apart from a brief blip a couple of years ago when he bought a Discovery 3, probably thinking he was of an age where he deserved a bit of comfort. But it turned out to be a bad choice: the interior soon got filthy as he jumped in and out with muddy boots and the cost of repairs were eye-watering compared to what he was used to as a Defender owner. Recently he decided he’d had enough and went looking for a Defender 110 hi-cap.
He soon realised that buying a secondhand Defender isn’t as easy as it used to be, especially if you’re looking for a specific model like Martyn was. They’re out of production, values are rising and people are hanging on to them. The only hi-cap he could find was a Td5 model – in white. In desperation, he snapped it up.
Have you ever wondered why farmers tend to drive green Land Rovers? Martyn will tell you why. It’s because certain colours show the muck more than others. Green is best for disguising grime.
White, of course, is worst of all. I have a hunch that Martyn will soon be investing in another green Defender.
While in Norfolk I also headed south to Thetford Forest and Breckland, where the sandy soil means greenlanes can be driven even in wet and wintry weather. I love this part of the world and so does the British Army, who use it for training. That’s how I managed to get a photograph of my Ninety with a World War II Cromwell tank in the background. It’s sitting on a plinth off the Swaffham-brandon road, atop a memorial of the role played by the Desert Rats in the Normandy landings.
When I hear youngsters today bleating about having their party plans spoiled by coronavirus and lockdown restrictions, I can’t help thinking about my late father’s generation, who put their lives on the line to fight a world war. Those who reckon it was the finest generation ever will hear no arguments from me.
The Ninety has behaved perfectly since it became my sole means of transport. It starts first turn of the key and returns just over 30 mpg from its transplanted ex-disco 300Tdi engine and R380 gearbox. It does, however, have its idiosyncrasies. While attempting to find Richard Hall’s workshop among the confusion of small lanes in deepest, darkest Norfolk, I resorted to sat nav. Unfortunately it was very overcast and when I switched on the headlights the sat nav, connected to the cigar lighter socket, went out. Navigating the old way with maps reminded me how much I rely upon sat-nav. I will have to get it fixed.
Closer to home, I know the local lanes like the back of my hand, so I don’t need sat nav. First trip out on return from Norfolk and I see a farmer checking out his cattle in a field by the river – and driving a three-door Freelander 1. I think it’s the first time I’ve seen a farmer choose a Freelander as his preferred mode of transport, but with excellent traction control to keep you going in slippery mud and wet grass, it makes sense. And I’m pleased to see another Land Rover working for its living.