Five go mad in the Fens
Another amazing field-find of rare Range Rovers for Tim Hammond, this time in Cambridgeshire
2018 started with a field-find of rare Range Rovers Classics in the Cambridgshire Fens, with no fewer than four two-doors and one early four-door. I was approached by a chap who had bought them all just to get a Series III Stage 1 V8 that was also sat with them, as the vendor only would sell as one whole lot. So the Stage 1 buyer was also stuck with five unwanted Range Rovers. “Would I be interested?” he asked. “Too true!” I replied.
I was unable to go view them immediately, but he sent me several photos, from which it was obvious they were in a pretty poor condition, but mostly complete. The one that stood out for me was the early four-door, which was a 1983 3.5 V8, three-speed automatic in Nevada Gold. This was a genuine second edition In Vogue. I love early four-doors, and one near the top of the list of those I’d like to own was most definitely an In Vogue four-door, so a deal was struck for all five and a few days later a low-loader arrived with the Range Rovers on.
The first task was to get them off without doing any damage to them. They were all non-runners, with no brakes, and also very fragile. The first one came off quite easily, but the second one didn’t want to oblige.
To make matters worse, the skies opened and it couldn’t have rained any harder if it had tried! We were soaked by the time they were all off the lorry, but my first priority was to tow them round to the back barn and get them under cover – a luxury they couldn’t have enjoyed for 20 years or more.
The In Vogue Range Rovers were special editions before the Vogue became a standard model in 1985. The first In Vogues of 1981 were only available in two-door and all were finished in
In Vogue blue.
The second edition came in 1983, with the launch of the auto gearbox. These were all automatics and only available in Gold or Silver. Roughly 500 were built.
The third and final edition came out in 1984 which were only available in metallic Derwent Blue.
Meanwhile my good old faithful 1986 Classic decided to go off with a bang on the A1! Me and a friend were off to go look at a classic that was sitting up near Bishop Auckland. I picked my mate up from Ripon, and off we went.
Everything was going well until we got near to where we needed to be, then suddenly there was a loss of power and clouds of black smoke. We pulled over, but the engine was knocking quite badly and there was oil everywhere.
After deciding that the damage had already been done, we managed to limp back home – or, nearly back home. We didn’t quite make it.
There is quite a big hill as you come out