Out of Africa and up for grabs
British dealer to sell a Range Rover with a famously gruelling track record
A 1973 Range Rover that completed a 14,000-mile five-month voyage from South Africa to the UK is for sale.
Maldon-based JD Classics has the car listed as £POA (price on application), but managing director Derek hood says that he’s looking for ‘in excess of £100,000.’
It was first owned by Le Mans-winning racer Duncan Hamilton, who specified the car with a Palomino interior.
But the epic expedition from Johannesburg to Somerset was completed by ex-ITN chief foreign correspondent Michael Nicholson, who died in December. The car even had a star role in a book written about the trip by Nicholson, called Across the Limpopo.
After using it every day for four years in South Africa, Nicholson was due to head back to England but couldn’t face the thought of simply waking up in the UK the next day. So he packed his family and their belongings into the Lincoln Green Range Rover and headed back to the UK. Nicholson and his family headed through Zambia to the Nyika Plateau of Malawi, through Tanzania’s Ngorongoro Conservation Area with where the group narrowly avoided a dangerous encounter with a herd of bull elephants.
The Range Rover overcame many other obstacles during the journey home, including the Weiwei Drift in Kenya, a series of spectacularly boggy washed-away bridges covering more than 90km.
The final leg of the journey led the family through Egypt, Sudan, Greece and mainland Europe before reaching the UK, where the car went into dry storage for many years.
Range Rover specialist Bishops 4x4 completed a bare-shell restoration, prior to it being offered for sale.
JD Classics’ managing director Derek Hood says: ‘ The classic Range Rover market is hugely popular at the moment, and this is a wonderful opportunity to own a very special part of it. And this one is perhaps the most desirable on the market today.’