Myth Buster
Debunking the most common old wives’ tales
Land Rover
1 IT CAN WINCH ITSELF UP A HUGE DAM
There was only one TV advert for the Land Rover Defender, in 1986 – but it showed a Defender driver taking a short cut by using his car’s winch to ascend Clywedog Dam near Llanidloes, accompanied by The Dambusters March. It didn’t quite happen that way – the 237ft dam’s height was way beyond how much cable could be accommodated on a Defender’s standard winch, so it was hauled up from above. However, there was a stuntman in the car doing the steering. Richard Hammond sort of did it for real in an episode of Top Gear, with a winch onboard, in 2015.
2 ITS NAME IS ITS WHEELBASE
The wheelbase in inches was referenced in the name during the days of the Series Land Rover – so 88, 107, 109 etc. However, as the years progressed, this got a little blurred. When the coil-sprung Land Rover was introduced, it was as the One Ten (1983) and Ninety (1984), renamed as the Defender 90 and Defender 110 in 1991. The One Ten did have a 110-inch wheelbase, but the Ninety was actually 92.9 inches. Then there was the Land Rover 127 from 1985, which was 127 inches. But when it was renamed the Defender, it received the 130 suffix, without any wheelbase change. Confused?
3 IT HAS AN ALUMINIUM BODY
When introduced in 1948, Land Rovers had aluminium (well, an aluminium/magnesium alloy called Birmabright) bodies. And the use of aluminium continued. However, not all Series 1s had aluminium outer panels. Licencebuilt variants were produced by Minerva in Belgium from 1952 to 1956 and had locally-produced steel shells, noticeably with sloping front wings.