LRM Classics

Vehicles, people and stories...

WELCOME to LRM Classics. This month we feature the final instalment on SYD, my 1990 Range Rover. The first part of the story appeared in the April 2021 issue and covered the first 13 years of my ownership from the day I bought it in August 1991. SYD and I had a lot of fun together during those years and I made many lifelong friends along the way. But I’d also trashed my Range Rover and, while I couldn’t bear to part with it, I didn’t have the resources to fix it. Part one of the story concluded with me driving it into a rickety outbuilding in December 2004 and shutting the door on it for the next four years.

Fast forward a few years and several things in my life had changed for the better, which meant that SYD could at last receive the attention it deserved. In 2009 I began a lengthy, four year restoration project and this month’s feature tells the story of that restoration.

Our second feature this month is the fourth instalment of Greg King’s fascinating story about the development of the original Defender, written by someone who was there! Greg brings the story bang up to date, giving us his perspectives on JLR’S various ‘continuation’ initiatives that were intended initially as a means of keeping the now discontinued brand in the public eye while the development of the new Defender was finalised. These initiatives included the Reborn programme as well as the

Works V8 rebuilds of secondhand Defenders, and Greg was personally involved with them all.