The Land Rover Story
EX-LRM editor and a true fan of Land Rovers since a child, Dave Phillips talks to Patrick Cruywagen about his latest book and his career to date
THE Land Rover Story is not your first book. Tell us how you became a writer and the other books you’ve written over the years. Most small kids dreamed of being professional footballers, train drivers or fighter pilots. My ambition, from the age of nine or so, was to be a writer. I wanted to write books, but there weren’t many 16-year-old authors, so I blagged my way into newspaper journalism, which I saw as the next best thing.
I was also a keen angler, so for many years I combined my two loves by writing about fishing. My first bylined article was in Angling Times, in 1972. The first book I contributed to was Pike Fishing In The 1980s, in about 1978. It was written mainly by my long-time friend, and former pike record holder, Neville Fickling, who invited me to write a guest chapter on fishing Fenland drains. I would have been about 22 at the time. A year or two later, I was invited to write a chapter on roach fishing in a book by another famous angler, John Bailey.
In 1983, at the ridiculously young age of 27, I was appointed editor of Coarse Fisherman magazine. While I was there I also contributed to a few fishing books, including that littleknown masterpiece Where To Fish In The Midlands, which I co-wrote with yet another well-known angler, Des Taylor.
After five years of editing the fishing mag, I got a bit bored and decided to try something different. In 1988 the days of Fleet Street were numbered, so I decided to work on the national papers before that era ended. I got plenty of freelance work on virtually all the daily and Sunday papers, but it was on the then little-known Sunday Sport that I was offered my first full-time job, as chief sub. Basically, it was my job to write memorable headlines for outrageous stories, but it also involved working alongside the late, great, Bobby Moore, who was at that time the paper’s sports editor and a
real-life hero to me. I was ten years old when he lifted the Jules Rimet Trophy after beating West Germany in the 1966 World Cup Final and working with him was a surreal experience. I had to keep pinching myself. During my spell at the Sunday Sport we took the circulation from 100,000 to over 500,000 a week, in a matter of months, with attentiongrabbing tongue-in-cheek stories like World War II Bomber Found on the Moon and Lord Lucan Seen Riding Shergar.
At this time I was living near Rugby and commuting to London, so to pass the two hours I spent each day on the train, I decided to write a fishing book. It was called Pike and sold rather well.
My next book came in 1997, after I moved to Northamptonshire and had fallen in love with the meandering River Nene. I traced the river from its source to the sea, uncovering the history of its towns and villages along the way. The end result was a book titled The River Nene From Source to Sea, which very quickly sold out and is now something of a collector’s piece.
By then I had got involved in Land Rovers, by virtue of getting bogged down in a wet meadow one March night in the early 1990s after a fishing trip. It resulted in a long trek in the pitch dark to find a farmer prepared to leave his cosy fireside and drag me out of trouble with his tractor. There and then I decided a 4x4 was a necessity - and I bought my first Land Rover, a 1983 Range Rover.
Once you’ve caught the Land Rover bug there’s no cure and I very quickly devoured all the books and magazines on the subject I could find. At that time I was a freelance journalist, dividing my time between working for the fishing titles and doing shifts on the News of the World subs desk in Wapping. I had never thought of working as a Land Rover journalist until I saw an advert in the UK Press Gazette for a production editor on LRO. That was in 1996. I applied and was interviewed by the editor, Carl Rodgerson, and John Pearson, at that time editor of Practical Classics. The interview went really well, but I didn’t get the job, which puzzled me until a year later, when I was invited back and got the job. I was told I hadn’t got it a year earlier because Carl and John had decided I was too highly-qualified and probably wouldn’t stay long. Twenty-two years later, I think it’s fair to say that I am the longest-serving Land Rover journalist in the business.
While working at LRO, I got to know off-road expert Vince Cobley very well and later ghost-wrote all his columns in the mag, so in 2011 it was a logical step for us to work together and we produced the Haynes Off-road Driving Manual, which continues to be a best-seller.
But my fascination – you could call it an obsession – about the real history of Land Rover meant that I was determined to tell that story one day.
As a former editor of the two biggest Land Rover magazines in the world, could you name a few of your most memorable Land Rover experiences.
I’ve been lucky to travel to every corner of the British Isles as well as many parts of the world in pursuit of the best Land Rover stories.
I guess the single most memorable experience has to be crossing Australia’s Simpson Desert in March 1999, with photographer Nick Dimbleby and a couple of great Aussie guys. It was so remote that you couldn’t get a station on the car radios and we were hundreds of miles from civilisation.
At the end of that trip, Nick and I turned up at Brisbane Airport for the long flight home to be greeted by crowds and banners everywhere, welcoming Pope John Paul II. Ever the newshound, I sniffed out the airport’s press office and requested permission for Nick to be on the tarmac to photograph His Holiness when he emerged from his plane. “Sure, no problem,” grinned the official.
I couldn’t be more impressed by the helpful attitude of the Aussies towards the press until an hour or so later when we found out the whole thing was a stunt organised by the local radio station. The date? April 1, 1999.
I was also nearly the victim of the best April Fool stunt ever pulled in Land Rover history. When Roger Crathorne worked in the company’s press office, he knew of my fascination with the semi-mythical Centre Steer and organised a very complicated prank in which he would invite me to join him in exploring a secret underground cellar that had been discovered beneath the offices at Solihull, where he
“I’ve never had time for the fawning and flattery that the suits at Land Rover expect”
would make sure I would stumble upon a dusty old scrap of paper that would turn out to be a design blueprint for – you guessed it – the Centre Steer.
Roger got a pal in Land Rover’s drawing office to come up with a very authentic-looking document and the trap was set to catch me. Sadly, at the last minute, Roger’s boss, Andrew Roberts, got cold feet and vetoed the stunt. It’s a shame, because it was a brilliant wheeze.
I didn’t find out about it until many years later, at the Peterborough Show, when I bumped into Roger and he confessed all. But at least the drawing was put to good use: it has appeared on official Land Rover merchandise, including tee-shirts, and I also featured it on the cover of my book.
As the co-author of the Haynes Off-road Driving Manual, what is the best piece of advice you can give for driving off-road?
All the electronic traction aids available in modern Land Rovers turn everybody into an instant off-road expert, but it is important not to get too cocky. Off-road driving can be dangerous, particularly if you are negotiating steep hills.
How does one even begin to tell the Land Rover story?
I didn’t want to produce a book of dry facts, nor did I want to write something to please the suits at Land Rover. I’m an oldschool journalist and I have never had time for the fawning and flattery that they expect. I was also trained to cut through the bullshit and it was pretty obvious that Land Rover had airbrushed its history somewhat over the decades.
Rather than trot out the same old party line, I told the truth as I saw it – and how former employees of the company that I trust remember it.
I was fortunate to be able to pick the brains of some great people who loved Land Rover every bit as much as I do – and who, like me, were determined that the real story be told.
It was also obvious to me that the story of Land Rover didn’t take place in a vacuum. Between 1948 and the present day there have been very turbulent times, socially and politically, which heavily influenced the fortunes of the company, especially in the early years. I therefore studied the effects of British social history and politics, especially through the British Leyland years when Land Rover, like all those other lost British marques, could so easily have sank without trace.
To tell this rather complicated story without making it tediously boring, I had to bring that history alive. It’s something I was taught to do at a very early age by a wonderful history teacher who was a real-life Mr Chips. John Smallwood spent his entire career at King Edward VII School at King’s Lynn, influencing and inspiring three generations of Norfolk schoolchildren, including myself. That’s why I dedicated my book to this remarkable man, who is now enjoying a well-earned retirement.
Ben Fogle recently wrote a Land Rover book which did not do too badly. What sets your book apart from Ben’s and other similar Land Rover books?
Ben is a lovely man who I met when he approached me to help him with the research on his book, which I did by introducing him to some of my friends and contacts in the Land Rover world.
Ben’s book was very different to mine in that it was semiautobiographical and he also attempted – successfully, I must say – to capture the varied personalities of the characterful enthusiasts involved in the Land Rover movement. The end result was a very enjoyable read, so I’m delighted that it has sold well. Great book, great bloke.
What will Roger Crathorne think of your book, or Gerry Mcgovern for that matter? Is this a Land Rover tell-all book?
Roger is a great friend of mine, but he is an
“One of the most important lessons from history is that what is past can happen again”
ever greater friend of Land Rover, which he would defend to the death. If I’ve written anything that he feels is incorrect or injurious to the company he loves so much, I’m sure he will tell me about it, but I expect he will still respect my point of view.
I do hope Gerry Mcgovern reads the book, because I think it will help him better understand why folk like me attach such importance to the heritage of the brand. He has yet to win over the enthusiasts.
Surely you uncovered some new Land Rover stories while writing the book. Care to share some of the more memorable ones with us?
I think the most important revelation was the nonsense about the relationship between Jeep, Land Rover and Red Wharf Bay – and the unlikelihood of that fabled drawing in the sand, which was disproved by historical events.
Perhaps the biggest ally I had for my research into the early years was Graham Nash, who as a young apprentice at Solihull knew Maurice Wilks and all the other key players. He is almost certainly the only living person who ever saw the original Centre Steer (he was small boy at the time) and he also supplied me the most compelling theory on what happened to prototype the centre-steer after it left Solihull.
What are your thoughts on the current state of affairs at JLR?
One of the most important lessons to be learned from history is that what is past can happen again. In the case of Land Rover, it has fought against all sorts of odds for its very survival. If it could escape alive from British Leyland, the current problems it faces are trivial indeed.
Personally I’m not impressed by the complicated electronic systems on modern Land Rovers. The company was built on its vehicles’ reputation for simplicity and toughness. I’m also uneasy about building Defenders in Slovakia. If just one vehicle was to remain at Solihull, it should be Defender.
Please can you give us a few snippets from the book to give the reader a taste of what to expect?
Legend has it that on a family outing to the beach at Red Wharf Bay, Anglesey, in April 1947, Maurice Wilks traced the outline of a proposed 4x4 in the sand as he explained his idea to his brother, Spencer. But this is a story that wasn’t known during the lifetimes of the Wilks brothers. In fact nobody heard it until after Maurice’s death in 1963, at the age of just 59.
One of his Solihull contemporaries, Graham Nash, insisted that the sand-drawing story was first put about by Maurice’s widow, Barbara, in the 1960s, as she didn’t feel her late husband had received the recognition he deserved for the invention of the Land Rover.
The vehicle that Maurice Wilks was proposing was an unashamed copy of a Jeep, and Spencer Wilks would have known exactly what a Jeep looked like, so why would Maurice have found it necessary to draw one in the sand?
I recently explained my thinking to a friend who’s a keen Land Rover enthusiast and he told me he felt like a child who had been told that Father Christmas doesn’t exist. If you feel like that about the drawing-in-the-sand legend, I’m truly sorry. But look on the bright side: I can assure you that Santa Claus is alive and well, and was last seen with his brother, Fred Claus, drawing pictures of a sleigh in the snow in Lapland.
The Centre Steer has become something of a Holy Grail to modern Land Rover enthusiasts: although no trace of it apparently exists, many experts are convinced that it’s still out there. The official line is that the 1947 Centre Steer was abandoned to rot in a shed somewhere in the Rover works at Solihull and was eventually thrown away during a spring-clean. It had certainly disappeared completely within a few years of its construction.
But everybody loves a good conspiracy theory and the romantics in the Land Rover world — myself included — can’t believe that the remains of a vehicle of such historic importance as the Centre Steer were ignominiously weighed in for scrap. Surely an employee with a better sense of history than his bosses succeeded in spiriting away the remains for preservation?
Well, perhaps he did. And perhaps his name was Alfred Bernard Smith, a future managing director and chairman of the Rover company, and who would be in charge when the company celebrated Land Rover’s 25th birthday, in 1973. But of more importance to this story is the fact that the charismatic A.B. Smith was a man with an unrivalled love of Land Rovers and their history, as Graham Nash explains.
Graham, now in his 70s, has lived in the Solihull area all his life and left school to join Rover at the age of 15, during the 1950s. As a young engineer he knew — and was in awe of — many of the key figures in the development of the Land Rover, including Maurice Wilks. And he is one of the very few people who can claim to have seen the Centre Steer.
Around March 1948 his uncle called round and mentioned that one of his neighbours had got the first Land Rover in his lock-up garage. “It was only on a stop-over and if we wanted to see it we had to go that night,” recalled Graham.
“My father agreed to walk me, his six-year-old son, to Tyseley village to see this special vehicle in a workshop rented by a man named Jack Gethin. The vehicle we saw that night was the Centre Steer. I clearly remember the steering wheel in the middle and it was painted light blue. I can see it in my mind’s eye now as clearly as I could then. Jack Gethin told us he was storing them for A.B. Smith, then a senior manager at Rover.”
Jack Gethin was a big player in the West Midlands automotive scene in that era and owned a major Rover dealership — J.W. Gethin at the Grange Garage, which was situated on Warwick Road, Tyseley. Having friends like A.B. Smith wouldn’t have done any harm.
Graham Nash continues: “The Centre Steer prototype hadn’t spent very much time at Solihull — just a matter of a few months — and there was only one name linked to it after disposal and that was A.B. Smith. At that time he was a senior manager and he ruled his domain with an iron fist, but he could be very generous and charming.”
A.B. Smith was known to be interested in the history of the Rover cars. Did he eventually set up a Rover or Land Rover museum? Most likely not, or at least there’s today no evidence of one, but he certainly enjoyed a long and successful career at Rover, which he joined straight out of school in 1925, as a tea boy, and rose steadily through the ranks until he was appointed managing director in 1969 and chairman in 1973, until his retirement in 1975, when he was fondly regarded as the last surviving member of the ‘old’ Rover board of directors.