‘this would have been the first land rover that a member of the public had ever seen’
This Land Rover prototype was believed lost. Now Mark Dixon tells the story of its remarkable discovery – and the plans for its future
It’s often said that people can remember exactly where they were when they heard the news that President Kennedy had been shot, or that Princess Diana had died in a car crash. Mike Bishop, a specialist at Jaguar Land Rover’s Classic Works facility, knows his exact location when he first heard that pre-production Land Rover no R07 had been discovered. ‘I was in a Thai restaurant ordering a take-away when the phone rang. It was [Land Rover historian] James Taylor calling to tell me that after all these years of searching for the very first Land Rovers, R07 had turned up. It was incredible – not least because, just a week earlier, I had watched the last Defender come off the line at Solihull. The other customers in the restaurant must have thought I was mad, because I was literally dancing with excitement.’
To understand Mike’s reaction, you should know that chassis R07 is one of the very first 48 Land Rovers that were handbuilt before the design was finalised for production. What’s more, R07 was displayed at the Land Rover’s very first public outing, the 1948 Amsterdam motor show. For more than 60 years its whereabouts were unknown, and it was generally believed to have been scrapped. And then it turned up in a back garden in a Birmingham suburb.
THE MAN WHO rescued R07 is Reg Mason, a Land Rover enthusiast and one-time proprietor of a business restoring them. But, as he readily admitted to Octane, even he didn’t realise the importance of what he’d unearthed at first.
‘A gentleman came into my workshop one day to ask if I wanted to buy a couple of old Landies. He said they were Series Is but they’d been in his garden for 25 years and had literally sunk down to their axles. If I didn’t want them, he was going to scrap them.
‘It was two or three months before I got around to viewing them. The one that turned out to be R07 I hardly bothered to look at because it was so rough. But the other, an 88in, was a nice complete car, and I thought that maybe I could make one good vehicle out of the pair. So I said I’d have them.
‘Myself and a mate, Dave, took three weeks to dig out the first Landy, which was the 88, and we towed it to my workshop. This was in November 2015. R07 we left where it was for the time being, although I took a lot of pictures of it. Then, a few weeks later in December, I was at the pub for a Christmas party and noticed
a really nice 1950 Land Rover in the car park. I got talking with the owner and showed him my photos. “I think that’s a pre-pro,” he said. “You can tell because the bracket for the steering column is welded up from three pieces of metal, rather than one bent piece.”’
Reg lost no more time in retrieving R07 from its burial ground. ‘We dug out underneath it, jacked it up and then pulled it out with a chain attached to my P38 Range Rover,’ he explains. With the vehicle safely in Reg’s workshop, it could be properly inspected. Word on the Land Rover grapevine soon filtered through to James Taylor, who came to examine R07, and via him to Mike Bishop. The experts quickly realised that not only was R07 the genuine article, it had also retained many unique pre-production features. Despite its poor condition, it was remarkably original.
NOT SURPRISINGLY, Mike Bishop soon convinced the high-ups at Jaguar Land Rover that they simply had to buy R07 for their collection. A deal was struck in March/April 2016 but was kept under wraps for the time being. ‘Classic Works was in the process of being set-up, and we were about to launch the Reborn programme [ JLR’s in-house restoration of Series Is to as-new condition],’ explains Mike. ‘And we also wanted to spend time looking at it and studying it to understand exactly what was what. With a vehicle like this, you have to take your time and get to know it.’
It quickly became apparent that R07 (‘R’ for righthand drive) had actually been built as L07 (‘L’ for lefthand drive), and then converted. This wasn’t unusual for the pre-production Land Rovers; in fact, of the 48 made, only one of the left-hand-drive vehicles wasn’t changed to right-hand drive by the factory. But the realisation that R07 was originally L07 caused further excitement, because it meant that it would have been built as a demonstrator for foreign markets – and, by a process of elimination, that meant it to be the longlost 1948 Amsterdam show car. Two vehicles were sent to the show, which was held on 30 April and was the first time that members of the public got to see a Land
Rover. One of these, L05, was kitted out as a mobile welding unit; the other one was the recently discovered R07, in its earlier L07 incarnation.
By a quirk of fate, it was L05, the welder, that ended up being displayed on the Land Rover stand indoors, while L07 was used for demonstrations outside. ‘It probably was intended to be the other way around,’ says Mike, ‘but Arthur Goddard [engineer for the Land Rover project, who is still alive in Australia] has confirmed that he and his workmate Johnny Cullum took the vehicles out to Amsterdam and, at the last minute, decided to put the welder on the stand instead. So L07 was outdoors, and would have been the first Land Rover that a member of the public had ever seen.’
THE REASON THAT this historically important vehicle soon disappeared from sight is that it was never issued with a registration number by Land Rover. Allocated to engine development engineer Jack Swaine for use as a mobile test-bed, it was run on trade plates until the factory finally decided to sell it in June 1955. Somewhere in its early life – possibly as early as the autumn of 1948 – it was converted to right-hand drive and renumbered R07, and at some point it was also updated with production-spec controls for the drivetrain. More on that later.
The first owner, who unfortunately (from a historian’s point of view) was called Smith, registered R07 on 25 June as SNX 910 – which explains the ‘factory’ SNX prefix, because he happened to live in Solihull! After that it moved between a handful of owners, though always in the British Midlands. It did duty with a dairy in Stratford-upon-Avon – the widow and grandson of the dairy owner have recently been traced – and it is reputed to have powered a sawbench on a Warwickshire farm for several years. Along the way it was repainted from its original light green into Land Rover Bronze Green, and at one point it was blue, possibly when it belonged to the dairy.
And then, in the late 1980s, it was bought by a householder in Tyseley, Birmingham, who was rebuilding a cottage in Wales and needed a workhorse. But he found another Series I in better condition and parked R07 at the end of his garden. In time, it would be joined by the other Series I, and both would remain there for a quarter of a century, slowing sinking into the ground, until the owner’s fateful visit to Reg Mason’s workshop in late 2015. SO WHAT, EXACTLY, is still left of the original L07? And when exactly did it become R07?
A big clue is a stamped metal tab on top of the radiator. The radiator isn’t the original – but it’s marked 9/48, which implies that it was installed sometime around September 1948. And that in turn suggests that the vehicle was upgraded to production spec around then, soon after the first Land Rovers that were intended for sale came off the line.
As part of this process, L07’s chassis was restamped as R07. But it’s the original chassis: only the preproduction chassis were galvanised, as this one is, which is why it has survived so well after decades of neglect. The engine is also the original, a highcompression Rover P3 saloon unit stamped ‘06’, and so are the gearbox, the early long-nose axles and the starter motor.
The bulkhead is L07’s, too, because it shows a hole where the steering column was positioned before the conversion to right-hand drive – pre-production bulkheads were ‘handed’ and this one was clearly lefthand drive to start with.
‘l07 would have been the first land rover that a member of the public had ever seen’
Crucially, the rear tub is also the original handmade component. Pre-pro Land Rovers had a gap between the front of the tub and the seatbox on which the driver sits; production vehicles didn’t. ‘The initial idea may have been to make the rear tub demountable,’ hazards Mike, ‘but the gap between the tub and the seatbox proved very draughty, and the design was changed.’
Significantly, there are also traces of mountings for the three ‘organ stop’ push-pull controls that, on prepro Landies, protruded through the dashboard to operate high/low range, to lock or release the freewheel for the transfer box (which sends drive to front and rear axles), and to select two- or four-wheel drive. As anyone who has driven an old Land Rover will know, on production vehicles these controls were changed to levers sticking up through the floor and gearbox cover.
However, the selectable two- or four-wheel drive option was dropped for production vehicles in favour of permanent four-wheel drive. ‘When you remember that there was a power take-off option as well, it would have been just too complicated,’ explains Mike. ‘But they had to retain the freewheel, which was changed to a ring-pull locking device for production, to avoid axle wind-up on a hard surface, when the front and rear wheels are turning at different speeds.’
We won’t go into the numerous other small details that mark R07 out as a pre-production vehicle, but it’s worth remarking on the foot pedals: pre-production pedals were cast from phosphor-bronze rather than steel, and are exceedingly rare. It’s amazing that they survived the transition from left- to right-hand drive. Of the parts that are definitely not original, the major ones are the front wings and radiator panel – as found, R07 was wearing 86in items, which have since been changed for items of the correct period; the transfer box; the passenger-side door, which was missing when
JLR acquired the vehicle; and the wheels – although one is a 1948 part, so could be a relic of the upgrade to production spec in that year. It’s a tantalising thought.
THE KEY QUESTION now, of course, is how far R07 should be restored – and to what specification? Should it be put back to how it looked at the 1948 Amsterdam show, left-hand drive and all, or to the form in which it’s existed for nearly all of its 70 years?
That’s the dilemma exercising the project manager tasked with R07’s restoration and conservation, Susan Tonks. A 17-year veteran at Jaguar Land Rover, she recognises the ‘massive honour’ of being put in charge of this Holy Grail of early Landies, while understanding just how sensitive a subject its restoration is among enthusiasts, worried that its originality might be lost forever by a ‘Reborn’ style total rebuild.
‘We will conserve the bodywork, making repairs
only where necessary for safety,’ reassures Susan. ‘The bulkhead is a little light on metal, but we’ll only replace what is missing and will then blend and age repairs to match the surrounding metal. Same with the footwells.
‘Again, the chassis will be repaired rather than replaced. Fortunately, because it was galvanised, it looks to have survived quite well but we won’t know for sure until the bodywork has been removed and it can be properly inspected.
‘We know that no2 cylinder in the engine has a crack in it, so it will be stripped and fitted with new internals. The gearbox will also be taken apart – but both the engine and ’box will be kept externally as they are now. Because the vehicle is to be put back into running order, it obviously has to be safe to operate.’
Among the more difficult decisions to be made is whether to source new components for the Lockheed braking system that was fitted only to pre-pros; production cars had Girling brakes, and R07 was converted to the latter. Parts for the Lockheed system now appear to be non-existent and so, if Classic Works decides to go down this route, it will probably have to make them from scratch. The same is true of the longlost ‘organ stop’ transmission controls.
The good news is that Classic Works still has the original drawings for these parts. The even better news is that it has the facilities and the motivation to recreate them. One way or another, R07 will soon be a fully working vehicle once again – and flying the flag for the company that built it exactly 70 years ago.