Rubber – a sting in the tail
1972 Range Rover
Owned by Charlie Magee
(c/o classic.cars@bauermedia.co.uk)
Time owned Eight years six months
Latest/total mileage 1850/99,230
Latest/total costs £2500/£10k
Previously Tracking down the right rotor arms
People usually start to glaze over when you start talking about rubber and they suddenly realise that the items in question are actually tyre shaped. For most people a conversation about tyres represents two disparate situations. A sudden roadside deflation, no tools or phone signal and eventual crisis purchase, or getting into conversation with the wrong bloke down the pub. But I was going to have to deal with the latter rather than be affected by the potential of the former.
I had been under pressure to get the right sort of tyres to replace the set of ageing Pirelli Scorpions that I’d inherited with the car when I bought it; they were old then! Even though – like lots of 4x4s
– the tread pattern was full of miles, the sidewalls were most assuredly not; UV light and the passage of time had clearly taken their toll. A widening network of cracks had developed that would one day lead to at best a flat and at worst a handling challenge that I may not have been up to.
One of the reasons that I’d been putting this upgrade off was down to choice. JLR Heritage had been working on bringing certain hard-to-find period parts back to life – at a price – for early Range Rovers and I’d been holding out for a set of original equipment remanufactured Michelin XM+S tyres. Alas it wasn’t to be. These were fitted to the early Suffix cars until the later Michelin XM+S 224 was used (now back in production by Michelin Classic). Any of the originals would be well and truly fossilised by now.
So, when I heard that Blockley Tyres in the Cotswolds was making a very sympathetic alternative product, I was sold. That would firstly help the car to regain its stance and secondly lower my anxiety of sudden catastrophe on the highways and byways.
The car was due to go into Famous Four in Louth for a bit more bodywork and paint so I asked the guys to fit a set of 205R16 M+SS complete with inner tubes – early rims are riveted to the centres and not airtight, though some disagree.
We spend so much time striving for originality in other aspects of presentation on our classics that rubber can easily be overlooked. And with the ageing Pirellis now replaced, there’s no longer a sting in this particular tale.