Land Rover Legends
Undoubtedly the most prolific researcher and writer on all things Land Rover, James Taylor has authored what many enthusiasts regard as the definitive reference works on the marque
Meet the most prolific researcher and writer on all things Land Rovers, James Taylor
IT’S May 2013, and Land Rover’s 65th birthday celebrations are already in full swing. JLR’S German operation has decided to mark the year by entering a team of classic Land Rovers and Jaguars in several continental rallies, and I’m delighted to have been invited to join them on the Bodensee Rallye in my 1970 Press Launch Velar. It’s not exactly a freebie, but the invitation comes as a result of them borrowing the vehicle a few years earlier for the Range Rover 40th anniversary celebrations in Germany. I need to find a navigator, and I’m thinking that a certiain James Taylor might take the bait!
The Bodensee is a three-day navigation and regularity event centred on the beautiful Austrian city of Bregenz on the shores of Lake Constance and, as well as requiring competitors to follow a remote and convoluted route into the mountains of Austria, Germany, Liechtenstein and Switzerland using traditional rally tulip diagrams, there are also a series of timed trials each day. The idea is simple, really, but if you’re not familiar with this sort of thing, here’s how it works. In each trial, you drive over a certain distance in a certain time, as set out in the rally book. Of course, it’s a bit more complicated than that, firstly because the rally book is in German, and secondly because the navigator has to
work out what speed you need to drive at to cover the required distance, and then convert everything into miles per hour to suit our speedo and odometer.
When the driver puts the nose of the car through the start timer, the navigator has to start the stopwatch and the driver has to attempt to maintain the required average speed over the prescribed distance. And as the finish timer comes into view, the navigator has to start the pre-agreed countdown so the driver can adjust his speed and put the front of the car through the timer as close as possible to the required time. On the more complicated multiple-timed sections there can be two or even three stopwatches running concurrently.
With the invitation to join the team in the bag, and knowing of James’ enthusiasm for all things Range Rover, I ask him if he’d like to join as navigator. He accepts with enthusiasm, but we do not cover ourselves in glory! Being a classic car rally, there are lots of old cars around and therefore plenty of distractions. And on one of the rally days our coffee stop is at the Fritz Busch car museum which happens to have a sizeable collection of Mercedes, which I discover are another of James’ passions. Such are the attractions there that James is quickly absorbed and I completely lose track of time. Emerging from a close inspection of what looks to me like a rather tatty old Mercedes taxi but is apparently
“I found a Suffix A Range Rover and bought that, and off we went to Morocco. That first Range Rover experience was tremendous, which is more than I can say about Morocco”
something rather special, I notice that we appear to be all by ourselves in the museum. All the other competitors have gone! We are very late leaving and the next rally checkpoint has already closed, so we can’t get our card stamped, and then we have to miss two timed trials in an attempt to catchup. Result? Massive penalty points. Our rather competitive team mates from JLR Germany are not amused.
We cement our reputation the following day, when James starts the final countdown on one of the trials and then, part way through, is distracted by something or other (probably another old Mercedes) and forgets to count. I offer a polite reminder, at which point he glances down at the stopwatch and starts to count the seconds off the other way round. Another poor score to add to our tally, although at the end of the rally we are astonished to discover that we’ve finished in 128th place out of some 190 competitors, which just goes to show how bad some of the others were! We take comfort in the fact that we’ve driven a total of 1790 trouble-free miles in five days from the UK to the foothills of the Alps and back again, including a single day’s drive of over 650 miles from Bregenz back home to Hampshire. As we leave Bregenz, many of the competitors are loading their prized old cars onto trailers for their relatively short drive home.
At the end of rally evening gala and prizegiving, though, our pitiful performance was forgotten and James was publicly saluted by the rally organisers for his rather more important achievements as one of the world’s leading automotive researchers, journalists and authors. He is certainly a household name among Land Rover enthusiasts and I’d bet that almost every serious fan of the marque has at least one of his volumes on their bookshelves. To date, he has over 150 books to his name, and counting. So how did it all begin?
“I’d been into cars since my teenage years,” James recalls, “and by the mid-1970s I was driving around in a Renault 16 which I’d tweaked, tuned and rebuilt. I thought it was a great-looking car and thoroughly enjoyed it. One of our neighbours had a Rover 3.5 Coupé which I’d always admired, and when the Renault gave up the ghost I decided to buy a Rover, although as an impecunious student I could only stretch to a 3.0-litre saloon. The neighbour obviously spotted the makings of a Rover enthusiast in me, though, and offered me his 3.5. I bought it, and became an instant fan of the glorious Rover V8.
“I completed my university studies in 1978 and wanted an extended holiday before I started to think about my career, and my then wife and I decided to head for North Africa. Various people told me I should buy a Peugeot 504, but I fancied a Land Rover and started to look for one. I came across a Carawagon with a six-cylinder engine and thought this would be ideal, but a test drive left me deeply unimpressed, primarily because its brakes seemed to be an optional extra, and then I decided that a V8 would be the thing to have. I found a Suffix A Range Rover and bought that, and off we went to Morocco. That first Range Rover experience was tremendous, which is more than I can say about Morocco, but when we got back after the trip I simply couldn’t afford to keep the car, and it was sold. But I never forgot how wonderful it was, and always planned to buy another one.
“Later that year I started work at the MOD as a management trainee, which was rather bizarre really, because I’d always seen myself as having a career in academia. My parents were both teachers – Dad was a headmaster and Mum was a deputy headmistress – so it was not really a surprise that I had planned to follow them into the teaching profession, and I rather fancied a life as a university lecturer.
“My areas of interest were languages and linguistics, and all my studies were geared towards this with a first degree in French and Medieval French, followed by an MA in Medieval History and a PHD in Medieval French Literature. But during my studies I realised how passionate I was about research, and I learned a great deal about how to conduct investigative research and the importance of never believing what you’re told and never giving up!
“I have to admit that the main reason I abandoned my ambitions in academia was financial. The Civil Service offered a much higher starting salary than a junior university lecturer! Very quickly I found myself immersed in research, analysis and report writing for the MOD, and I ended up staying there for 12 years. But with a young family and a lengthy commute every day to London, there was very little time to indulge my interest in cars.
“My first Rover cars and my experience with the Range Rover had really stoked a determination to find out more about the
vehicles and the company that made them, and I soon realised that there really wasn’t much in print at that time. I had a profound curiosity about the vehicles and why they had been designed and engineered the way they had, and I decided to try to make contact with the people who had conceived and constructed the vehicles I admired so much. I wrote to Rover and they allowed me to talk to several people still working there. I also spoke to some retired employees and recorded my conversations with them. And the more I learned the more I wanted to know! I continued to meet as many people as I could, and I soon started to build up a deep pool of research material and personal reminiscences, at a time when nobody else was really doing this.
“I suppose it is the aspiring teacher in me that leads me to want to share what I’ve learned, and this is how my first motoring book came about. I’d been a member of the Rover Sports Register for several years, and I realised there was a lot of interest among Register members for the kind of information I’d been gathering. I had the story as a result of my research, and sharing it with fellow enthusiasts was something I was happy to do. I printed about 80 copies of that first booklet on the Rover P5, and sold them all at £2 each! And that’s really how it all started.
“I found time to produce several more books, including some that were commissioned by a Rover enthusiast and entrepreneur called Daniel Young, but my first book on Land Rover was called ‘The Land-rover, 1948-1984’ which was published by Motor Racing Publications in 1984. I also selfpublished a few books, including one in 1986 on the Rover SD1 which had just gone out of production. But what really changed everything was the launch of the first monthly magazine dedicated to the Land Rover.
“That was, of course, Land Rover Owner, which was founded by the gang of three – Richard Green, John Cornwall and editor Richard Thomas – and the first issue appeared in July 1987. Those early issues make fascinating reading now, with articles on shooting, fishing and even helicopters, and lots of adverts for tweed coats and green wellies, and pictures of the Queen or Captain Mark Phillips on the cover! But the magazine soon sorted itself out and became totally focused on the vehicles themselves. I’d been reading it since the early days, and one month when I realised how little readers seemed to know about the real story of the Land Rover, I contacted Richard Thomas and offered to write something
“It is the aspiring teacher in me that leads me to want to share what I’ve learnt, and this is how my first book came about. I printed 80 copies of that first booklet on the Rover P5”
about the background to the Series III. My first feature appeared in the December 1990 issue, and from then on I became a regular contributor. In early 1991 Richard commissioned me to write a regular monthly article entitled ‘ The Land Rover Story’ and the first part came out in June 1991. It was eventually to run for 98 episodes!
“My job at the MOD was keeping me away from home a lot, including weekends sometimes, and one of the jobs I did and very much enjoyed was to run training courses for civil servants on effective writing. I realised there was a market for this sort of training in the private sector as well, and I worked out that if I wasn’t spending a fortune on my commute into London every day I could live on a lot less and spend my time doing what I really wanted to do. And, of course, have more time to spend on my cars! So I took the plunge and resigned from the MOD to pursue a new career as an automotive researcher and writer, while also offering training courses on effective writing to both the business community and to the Civil Service.
“Around this time there was an explosion of interest in classic vehicles of all types, and I was fortunate enough to be in the right place at the right time, and with the right skills, to be able to ride this wave of enthusiasm. Although I was new to the magazine world it was quickly obvious to me that what editors wanted were reliable contributors who would deliver the right number of words on the subject they had been retained to write about, and deliver it on time! I was already a regular monthly contributor to LRO and became the magazine’s resident expert on the history of the marque, and reader feedback on my articles later led to the first Roverphile column – which I’ve now been writing continuously for 23 years.
I’m keen to get James’ views on the proliferation of Land Rover-oriented magazines that began in the mid-1990s, which at one point meant there were no fewer than four monthly titles all basically addressing the same market.
“LRO had tapped into a rich vein of enthusiasm for Land Rovers and it wasn’t long before a me-too appeared on the scene,” says James. “In 1994 Link House Publishing launched Land Rover World magazine as a direct competitor to LRO, having already introduced Off Road & Four Wheel Drive magazine in the mid-1980s, which itself had its roots in David
Bowyer’s pioneering ‘Overlander 4x4’ magazine.
“With the appearance of a competitor, two of LRO’S founding gang of three decided that the golden days were over, and put Land Rover Owner up for sale. The buyer was EMAP and the first thing they did was put in one of their resident editors, Martin Hodder, to head the editorial team at LRO. Richard Thomas wasn’t supportive of the sale and was disappointed to be forced to step aside as editor.”
In fact, the sale was announced rather bluntly by Richard Thomas in the August 1994 issue with the words “we’ve sold the magazine. After a shade over seven years of publishing LRO, the founding team have done a deal with EMAP – one of the UK’S largest publishing companies – and from here on they’ll be the ones who’ll carry the can”. He went on to say that although EMAP had acquired the magazine, the LRO mail order and events activities, including the all-important Billing Show, would not be managed by EMAP but would continue to be managed by Richard Green and John Cornwall, the other two members of the gang of three. This latter point, together with Richard’s disappointment that his erstwhile colleagues had decided to sell the magazine that he had spent so much time building-up, were to play significant roles in both the development of the UK’S Land Rover magazines and the evolution of the emerging show scene, as well as James’ subsequent career.
“Under the terms of the sale to EMAP, Richard Thomas was prevented from launching a similar magazine,” says James. “But, when that embargo ended, he immediately did exactly that, introducing Land Rover Monthly with the intention that it would be the spiritual successor to LRO. Many of LRO’S original contributors, myself included, more or less immediately jumped ship to join Richard in this new venture, and the first issue of LRM appeared in late 1998.
“LRM continued to grow and was very well-received in the market, but then in 2000 I was approached by Richard Green, the member of the gang of three who had retained the rights to the Billing Show when LRO was sold to EMAP, telling me that he planned to start a new magazine that would be called ‘Land Rover enthusiast’. Green offered me the position of editor and made me a financial offer that I couldn’t refuse, so I found myself working for my third Land Rover title and we launched the new magazine in November 2000.
“Green had continued to stage the Billing Show on behalf of EMAP, badged as the LRO Billing Show, but for some reason his collaboration with EMAP’S LRO team had foundered, and he wanted to create a rival magazine that would be the vehicle to promote a new Billing Show. I was happy to collaborate with his aims, because I had editorial control of LRE and could create the kind of Land Rover magazine that I believed a sizable proportion of the fans of the marque wanted to see.
“LRE established itself as the UK’S fourth Land Rover magazine title, and grew rapidly because it was noticeably different from the other three. But in 2006 the Billing showground changed hands and the new owners advised Richard Green of their intention to increase the charges for the use of the venue. Green concluded that staging the show would no longer make financial sense and decided to call it a day, but the first I heard of this was when he called me to tell me he was closing down LRE!
“I was able to acquire the rights to the magazine from Green and, together with Bruce Skivington and Simon Hodder, continued to publish it. Little did we know that lurking just around the corner was the 2008 financial crisis, which led to companies making massive reductions in their advertising spend. We soldiered on for a couple of years, but then with great reluctance we decided to sell the magazine and published the last LRE in May 2010. The title was acquired by Dennis Publishing who had the year before acquired LRM from Richard Thomas, who had by then married his business partner, Cathie Howell, and was known as Richard HowellThomas. And so I found myself writing again for LRM! That didn’t last very long, though, because I was approached by LRO’S then editor, John Pearson, whom I’d known for years, and ended up taking my Roverphile column across to LRO,
“When that embargo ended, he [Richard Thomas] introduced Land Rover Monthly with the intention it would be the spiritual successor to LRO, and the first issue appeared in late 1998”
so things rather came full circle.”
In parallel with this extended game of magazine musical chairs, James’ book-writing activities had grown exponentially and he had also been retained by Land Rover themselves to work on a number of projects, including commissions to produce press releases on various historical topics and to provide assistance with various projects, including some that he says he still can’t talk about. He has also been called upon to talk to overseas journalists and has prepared major history books for the launch of the Evoque in China and Russia, copies of which were provided to the buyers of new vehicles. He was also a consultant to JLR on the Range Rover Story exhibition at Solihull, and contributed to the earlier Series I exhibition at the factory.
And does he think there are any more books on Land Rover to be written, I ask? “Yes, very much so,” says James. “Ongoing research continues to throw up new insights and perspectives, and there are far more people engaging in research now than ever before, so new things are being discovered that cause us to revisit aspects of the company’s history, or the history of individual models. And of course new vehicles are being introduced every year, and each of these will eventually have their fans with an interest in the story of that particular model.
“The buyers of Land Rover vehicles also change over time,” he muses, “and we’ll see this shift happening again when the New Defender is launched, just as we did before with the introduction of the first Discovery, the Freelander and the Evoque. I think we’ll see other changes in the enthusiast community as well, as the new models won’t provide the same potential for an owner to customise their vehicle that the old Defender offers. And this might mean a higher degree of polarisation between the owners of the new models and the owners of classic Land Rovers.”
It’s an interesting point, and leads me to ask James what he thinks the definition of a classic Land Rover will be in ten or 20 years’ time. He’s clearly thought about the question, which probably shouldn’t come as a surprise, and offers an opinion. “The Series vehicles, and their successors through to the end of Defender production, will always remain blue
“The Series vehicles, and their successors through to the end of Defender production, will always remain blue chip classic Land Rovers, as will the original Range Rover, Discovery 1 and 2”
chip classic Land Rovers, as will the original Range Rover and the Discovery I and II. I’m not convinced the P38A will ever have the same desirability, though, and nor will the Discovery 3 and 4, or the Freelander. And any vehicle built after around 2000 is increasingly loaded with sophisticated electronics which are cheap to add when the vehicle is being built, but not necessarily cheap to maintain as the vehicle gets older. It’s a problem facing the entire classic car movement, really.”
James has also been able to fulfill the promise he made to himself to acquire another classic Range Rover, although it took him ten years to do it! This was PBT 946 which many will remember from its regular appearance in the magazines. When he bought it in 1988 it was a two-door 3.5 V8, but by the time he’d finished his personal development programme it had morphed into a four-door 200Tdi! This was sold in 2001 and replaced with a Discovery 2 which was his daily transport for 17 years, but finally had to go when the estimated cost of dealing with the inevitable chassis and body rot was impossible to justify.
Today, he still has the 1950 Rover 75 Cyclops saloon that he’s owned for years that was built ten days before he was born, and he has once again returned to his Range Rover roots with J180 OAC, a 1991 3.9 that was originally built with air suspension for the launch that was cancelled. The factory converted it to coil suspension, but the tell-tale evidence of the air suspension remains to this day, making it a remarkably interesting vehicle. “Technically, it’s actually my wife Toni’s Range Rover,” says James, “but I’ve been using it since the demise of the Discovery!”
And finally, I ask James exactly how many books he has written on Land Rover. He doesn’t know, but a quick check reveals the answer to be no less than 53, including several in foreign languages, and there are more in the pipeline with at least two to be published later this year. Pretty impressive, and it all started with that booklet on the Rover P5 that was put together on the kitchen table.