FROM AN ANGLESEA BEACH TO THE WORLD
If the Land Rover’s profile looks like a kid’s drawing of a car — if less so than Tesla’s Cybertruck — that’s because it was first drawn in the sand with a stick.
The artist, though, was no child. Maurice Wilks was a talented engineer developing Rover’s gas turbine powered car, following on from his wartime work with Frank Whittle on his revolutionary jet engine.
Rover had asked Wilks to come up with a utility vehicle as a stop-gap project. The company was struggling to sell its luxury cars in a near destitute post-war Britain. Maurice had the American Jeep in mind, and in fact the prototype was built on a Jeep chassis, but with the future of the company on the line he and his engineer brother, Spencer, put their minds to coming up with something a whole lot better.
Wilks sketched out his original idea for this 4×4 Rover on the sandy beach near his farm on the island of Anglesey. Launched in 1948 the ‘Land-rover’ was an instant success. Sales of the Land Rover soon outstripped sales of Rover luxury cars by a margin of two to one. It quickly found favour with farmers in the UK and wherever the asphalt ended in the far-flung reaches of the Commonwealth.
Sales reached more than a million part way through the Series III Land Rover’s reign but by then sales volumes were in serious decline. At that stage Land Rover was part of the beleaguered British Leyland. That company’s inability or unwillingness to invest in new powerplants that would give the Landy a decent on-road cruising speed — so vital in places like Australia and South Africa — meant Land Rover began losing sales hand over fist to more powerful and roadworthy vehicles from Japan; Toyota’s Land Cruiser and Nissan’s Patrol.
The advent of the Range Rover, changes of ownership to BMW and later Tatra — and finally, some decent powerplants — plus a healthy dose of carefully nurtured affection for the car’s literally ground-breaking history, saw the marque saved. The Defender, the last iteration of the Wilks lineage, ceased production in 2016.