THE CAR THAT COULD DRIVE UP A CLIFF
As the Range Rover turns 50, the Boy’s Own yarn of the British officer who tested the prototype to the limit — by trying to drive it through 250 miles of jungle crawling with snakes to complete the world’s longest road
PLUnGInG ravines, the dark morass of jungle and a rollercoaster of inclines: nothing seemed too challenging for the vehicle I was driving. Ensconced in luxurious leather upholstery and surrounded by an abundance of whizzy modern features — looking at the control panel and its multiple settings and gadgetry it felt more like the cockpit of a state-of-the-art jumbo jet rather than a 4x4 — I couldn’t help but marvel at the sophistication of the new £110,000 Range Rover.
My 17-year-old grandson Daniel, sitting alongside me in the passenger seat, was similarly entranced.
True, the ‘jungle’ I was navigating back in February was a home-made affair, constructed by Land Rover at its site just ten minutes from Solihull in the Midlands, for enthusiasts to test the much-lauded off-road capabilities of these top-of-the-range vehicles. But it was altogether fitting I’d been invited to try it out.
Some 50 years ago, I was doing much the same in one of the very first Range Rovers — except back then it was in the searing heat and humidity of a very real jungle filled with swamps, snakes, mosquitos and bandits — in what has gone down in history as the greatest ever stunt to launch a new car.
And the Range Rover, which celebrates its 50th birthday this month — and which, in terms of design and function, has come to epitomise the best that off-road vehicles have to offer — certainly deserved that accolade. Back in 1970, I was a Major in the Royal Engineers (the ‘Sappers’ as we are known) serving in the Ministry of Defence.
I had been instructed by the Army to help find a route through the thenunconquered 250-mile gap in the epic Pan-American Highway — at 17,000 miles, the longest road in the world, joining Anchorage in Alaska to Tierra del Fuego at South America’s southernmost tip.
Yet the most treacherous part of that route, known as the Darien Gap, which would link Panama and Colombia, had foiled all attempts to navigate it. The stakes were high and our chances slim — but by then plans were already underway, among them the delivery of two Range Rovers, a new, sleek, off-road vehicle fresh off the production line which Rover (as it was then) had offered to lend our expedition in what they presumably saw as a splendid way to publicise their innovative new car to the world.
Back then, in the grim Seventies, the car’s power, appearance and its stunning suspension, shock absorbers and assorted gizmos — including electrical sockets into which you could plug a coffee maker — meant it was considered the ultimate luxury crosscountry vehicle.
And so I found myself on a dank winter morning preparing to board the cavernous belly of an RAF Hercules aircraft bound for Panama City, alongside an Army Beaver light aircraft with its wings removed, and an Army Air Corps team.
We arrived in steaming Panama, hooking up days later with the Range Rovers and our expedition team of 59 men, five women and 28 pack horses. We set off in good spirits to make the 50-mile journey to the start of the jungle, with a recce group scouting ahead, finding a route for sappers to clear.
Among us were servicemen (including a Gurkha soldier), scientists — there to study the wildlife and to protect the lives of the indigenous population once the road was built — and medics from America, Britain and Latin America.
Our secret weapon was a special Avon inflatable raft to get vehicles across rivers. The high spirits did not last long: soon, glutinous mud and dense vegetation caused havoc. It took hours of pushing and winching to get our stricken vehicles to the forward camp — only to find the back axles had started to disintegrate.
After 17 days, we had advanced only 30 miles and had more than 200 to go — with the worst going still ahead of us. All we could do was radio back to Rover in England where an incredible redesign job took place to remedy the axle problem. Within days, new parts, from the UK, were parachuted to us. We had not been sitting idle in the meantime: a battered Land Rover had been found in Panama City and air-lifted to our jungle spot by helicopter and driven by our sappers to help clear a path ahead.
Even so, once our Range Rovers were repaired, the challenges were many: fallen trees and mud so deep that it took us 19 hours to extract one horse stuck in the quagmire.
Trench foot was rife, and half the team were suffering sickness or injuries at any one time. The steep hills remained perilous: some areas looked simply unbridgeable, including a block of vertiginous summits that seemed a hurdle too far until an old local man told me of a smugglers’ path over a 45-degree cliff.
It seemed impossible that even our robust Range Rover could conquer such a mountain — but we had to try. Our solution came in the form of a
Tirfor jack, a very thin, immensely strong steel cable that, combined with a lever, we used to winch our vehicles up the cliff.
It was terrifying to watch some poor driver being hauled up the cliff, still at the wheel. More obstacles followed: one Range Rover disappeared while fording a river, emerging half-full of water. We thought it would never work again, but within 36 hours we were back on the road.
We followed our pathfinding Land Rover to the border, where the Colombian Army welcomed us, recalling how British troops had come to the aid of Simon Bolivar’s rebels in 1821, affording them the honour of entering their country with flags flying, drums beating and bayonets brandished.
We made do with one Union flag, a shotgun and a biscuit tin as a drum. We still had to get through the alligatorinfested Great Atrato swamp, a stretch of muddy water the size of Wales that no one had ever crossed before.
One by one we pushed forwards through the last bit of jungle, and 100 days after we first entered the Darien Gap, reached the gigantic bridge that formed the end of the southern section of the PanAmerican
highway. It was, by chance, St George’s Day. It was the end of my journey, but the Range Rovers were driven to Cape Horn, at the southernmost tip of Tierra del Fuego, then back to England, and displayed at Coventry Transport Museum. Little could I imagine then that nearly 50 years later I would drive another Range Rover in an altogether different jungle, with my grandson at my side. The road through the Darien Gap was never completed, defeated by a combination of politics and logistics. But it was an amazing adventure, in a magnificent car for which I retain a huge affection.
Colonel Blashford-Snell will be giving lectures in 2021 about his adventures in the Darien Gap. For details, visit johnblashfordsnell.org.uk or ses-explore.org