‘Missing’Welsh Land Rover prototype set to ride again
ONE of the first Land Rover 4x4s – designed on an Anglesey beach and believed lost – will now be restored to its former glory after being discovered in a back garden.
The pre-production model was used to launch the original vehicle in 1948 after being developed by Maurice Wilks on the island, where Wilks had a home. Its innovative body shape was first drawn in the sand at Red Wharf Bay.
This first demonstration vehicle went to the Amsterdam show in 1948 and was last on the road in the 1960s. After that it spent 20 years in a Welsh field – Land Rover won’t reveal where – before being bought as a restoration project. It then lay languishing unfinished in a garden a few miles outside Solihull, Birmingham – where the car was first manufactured.
After its discovery, experts at Jaguar Land Rover Classic Works spent months researching company archives to unravel its ownership history and confirm provenance.
Now the team will start a yearlong mission to preserve this historically significant prototype and enable it to be driven again.
Tim Hannig, Classic Works director, said: “This Land Rover is an irreplaceable piece of world automotive history and is as historically important as ‘Huey,’ the first pre-production Land Rover.
“Beginning its sympathetic restoration here at Classic Works, where we can ensure it’s put back together precisely as it’s meant to be, is a fitting way to start Land Rover’s 70th-anniversary year.
“There is something charming about the fact that exactly 70 years ago this vehicle would have been undergoing its final adjustments before being prepared for the 1948 Amsterdam Motor Show launch – where the world first saw the shape that’s now immediately recognised as a Land Rover” its