6 RANGE ROVER P38

LOOK carefully and you could find a running P38 Range Rover for £500. And then you could spend the rest of the £7000 of the budget getting it working properly. This generation of Land Rover’s flagship has been unloved and undervalued for years, mainly because they have a reputation for going expensively wrong. They were turned away by even the most hardened Land Rover mechanics as “too much trouble”. So why are we recommending them? Because now there are specialists who can make them work properly and the values of cherished examples are rising fast. An early car which hasn’t been molested is a decent investment, while some of the poshest special editions are already out of our price range.

ANDREAS FREITAG bought his 1998 4.6 HSE in 2012 for €3500 in Frankfurt: “It was originally priced at €7500 but the price went down rapidly when the car caught fire on the test drive! Now it brings him a great deal of pleasure especially as it has been tuned to ‘Arden’ spec: “I catch myself pushing the sport mode button and giving the old dinosaur a kickdown start. It accelerates like hell and nobody expects it!”