Gary Pusey
Ken Wheelwright built a reputation for creating some of the very best restorations of early Land Rovers, now highly sought-after by collectors. This is his story…
Gary pays tribute to the late, great Ken Wheelwright, restorer extraordinary
IN the mid-1980s the Land Rover enthusiast scene was very different to the one we’re all familiar with today. The first monthly magazine dedicated to Land Rovers did not appear until July 1987, and even then it initially focussed only on new vehicles and was clearly aimed at the hunting, shooting and fishing brigade. Old Land Rovers were cheap and plentiful, and it would be another 25 years or more before early vehicles started to become blue-chip classics with prices to match. There was a thriving club scene that had its roots in the Rover Owners’ Association and the Land Rover Owners’ Club that had been set up by The Rover Company in the 1950s, and there were a growing number of clubs dedicated to one or other of the Land Rover models. But restoring early Land Rovers to their as-new factory specification was still a minority interest and there were very few, if any, professional restorers offering such a service.
Even among that close-knit club scene and the small group of people restoring early vehicles with an eye on authenticity, at that stage the name Ken Wheelwright was largely unknown. That would change in 1988, and for the rest of his life Ken set the standard for restorations that others could only aspire to. Nowadays, a vehicle that can claim to be a ‘Ken Wheelwright’ will be highly sought-after and command a significant price premium.
Ken, who was always known locally to family and friends as Tim, was born in 1932 in the Yorkshire West Riding. In the 1930s his father had started a road haulage business and Ken grew up surrounded by lorries and other machinery. By 1950 the business had expanded to a fleet of seven vehicles, and Ken was doing his National Service in the RAF as an engine fitter. The post-war Labour government was committed to the wholesale nationalisation of the country’s transport infrastructure and this included what was described as ‘long-distance road haulage’, which basically meant that any haulier operating further than 25 miles from its home base was going to be hoovered-up by the government to create a state-controlled monolith, known as British Road Services. A total of 3766 privately-owned road haulage companies and their 41,265 vehicles would now be owned and managed by the government.
After the family haulage business had been incorporated into BRS, Ken’s father bought Marshaw Bridge Farm and this is when Ken’s love for farming began. He met local girl Doris at the Young Farmers Club and they were married in 1955. “At that time Dad had a small Morris van,” says their daughter Mary. “It couldn’t get up the hill to the house where mum lived with her parents, so she used to get out halfway up and push him to the top so he could turn around to drive back down! They were married in 1955 and moved to Hollin Hey Farm where they established a herd of Friesians and started a milk round in Mytholmroyd which they ran for 45 years. Alongside his love of farming dad also had a passion for renovating and restoring cars, and his first restoration was a Triumph 1300 which he did with his brother-in-law, Edward. They were then joined by Dad’s elder brother, Dudley, and they started buying and renovating exmilitary Jeeps and Minis.”
Ken bought his first Land Rover in 1956 and said to historian and writer Peter Galilee in 1994 that he ‘wasn’t particularly
interested in them at the time. It was just for work’. That first Land Rover was not in the best of health and attempts at repairing it turned into a full rebuild before it was sold and replaced with a new 2.0-litre diesel Series II, and from that point on Ken always bought new Land Rovers for the farm. But in the early 1970s he bought what are perhaps the most well-known of the many Series I Land Rovers he has restored: the two 1949 80-inch vehicles known ever since as the ‘Del-boys’. Both were ex-military and the first was acquired in 1971 for the princely sum of £135, and it was while searching for replacement seat backs for it that he stumbled on the second vehicle and bought that as well.
Not a lot happened to either vehicle for many years and when Ken finally started work on them he was still largely unaware of the Land Rover club and show scene. In 1987 a neighbour mentioned that there was a local event coming up in September that year at Top Farm near Huddersfield, later known as the Langley Farm 4x4 Show, and this is where Ken took the first of the vehicles to be completed, and came home with his first show prize. Ken registered the exmilitary vehicles and was granted a pair of age-related numbers, 437 DEL and 438 DEL, and that’s how the ‘DELboys’ came into existence.
The following year, 1988, was an important one for Land Rover because it was the 40th anniversary of the launch of the vehicle in 1948, but it would also be the year that put Ken and his restorations on the national stage. Several anniversary events were being planned for the year and Ken decided to enter some of them.
Both the ‘Del-boys’ were shown at the Land Rover Series One Club’s Embsay Rally near Skipton in April 1988. Another event organised jointly by the LRSOC and the Land Rover Register 1948-1951 was in Wales, returning to the location in the Elan Valley that The Motor magazine had used for its original 1948 road test of the then-new Land Rover. Peter Galilee wrote in 1995 that “the participants were split into four groups, Ken having been allocated to David Bowyer’s section with 437 DEL, but a representative of Land Rover Parts asked David if another vehicle, just the same, could join them. David, so the story goes, was stunned when an identical vehicle bearing the consecutive registration number 438 DEL rolled into view. At the final prizegiving Ken’s two pristine vehicles jointly took the Best Overall Vehicle trophy, presented by David Bowyer.
Andrew Bullas, who runs Windmill Landrovers in Blackburn, remembers meeting Ken for the first time at the Embsay rally in 1988. “No one was really restoring Land Rovers to such a high standard in those days,” he says. “Ken and I became great friends and went to a lot of events together over the years. Ken was a perfectionist and liked to do his restorations his way and never really wanted to be commissioned to rebuild a vehicle. In fact, if he was asked he would usually refuse, but offer to take on the vehicle and restore it according to his way of doing things, and then the owner could buy it back if he liked it!”
Those early restorations were completed by Ken and his brother, Dudley, and their friends George Helliwell and Eric Dawson, working weekends and nights after the day job was done. “It was really just a hobby to begin with,” says Mary, “and the four of them were known affectionately as ‘Last of the Summer Wine’ with dad, of course, being Compo!
“When I met and married Frank, Dad started to spend more time in the garage with his Land Rovers,” says Mary, “and Frank took on the management of the farm.” Later on Frank became increasingly involved with the Land Rovers as well. “At first it was just to give them a hand,” says Frank, “and to be honest sometimes it got in the way of me running the farm and milking the cows, but over the years I became more and more involved with the Land Rover restorations and it has almost taken over from the cows!”
The main anniversary event in 1988 was the Association of Rover Clubs’ 33rd National Rally at Trentham Gardens and once again Ken took home the trophy, in this case the Register Shield for the best new restoration. As he told Peter Galilee in 1994: “When we went to the 40th anniversary events we were unknown. My brother Dudley and I took just the two motors. Land Rover Parts took photos to include in their 40th anniversary calendar, and I met Roger Crathorne who asked if the company could borrow 438 DEL for the Land Rover stand at that year’s Motor Show.” The Wheelwrights and their beautifully restored ‘Del-boys’ were well and truly on the map.
Roger Crathorne remembers it well. “I’d gone along to the 40th anniversary event in Wales in one of the two prototype 40th Anniversary vehicles. The company had been planning to build a 40th Anniversary Limited Edition, although it was later cancelled. That’s where I met Ken for the first time. I was very impressed by the DEL vehicles and Ken became a real friend to the company, loaning us his wonderfully-restored vehicles whenever we needed them for various events.”
“Other restorers now had a yardstick and restorations were commenced in several quarters, the task being to beat Ken Wheelwright,” Peter Galilee wrote in 1995. “But hardly was the National Rally over than Ken was planning his next project.” This was HAC 942, the 52nd production Land Rover and an ex-factory demonstrator. It had been restored by a previous owner and then sold, and its new custodian took it along to the Embsay Rally where it was, according to Ken, “comprehensively pulled apart by the experts and this disheartened the bloke.” The owner decided to sell it and, of course, it was Ken who bought it. He contacted the restorer who by now realised what he had done wrong and wanted to see the vehicle restored properly. Luckily, he had kept many of the parts he’d removed during his attempt at restoration, and Ken was able to retrieve these and incorporate them in his own rebuild of the vehicle. It was completed in 1990 and was again shown at Embsay, although this time it came home with the silverware! Ken showed it at the ARC National Rally that year as well, together with the two ‘Del-boys’, and came away with first, second and third places as well as the David Bowyer Trophy for the best Series I.
Meanwhile, Ken had cemented his position in the club scene when in 1990 he became chairman of the Land Rover Register 1948-1951, a club founded in 1976 by Tony Hutchings with the purpose of researching and rediscovering the surviving Pre-production Land Rovers and the early production models built up to 1951. The club is still thriving
“1988 was an important year because it was the 40th anniversary of the launch of Land Rover but also the year that put Ken and his restorations on the national stage”
today, and in 1999 it extended the period it covered to 1953. Ken would remain its chairman until he stood down in 2009.
Ken had set his heart on acquiring a pre-production Series I and went along to the famous auction held by John Craddock in early 1990, where one of the lots was pre-pro L46. Ken decided against it, though, but another auction attendee he got talking to mentioned an early 80-inch that had been sitting in a barn for the past 17 years. It turned out to be what Ken described as one of the most original vehicles he had ever seen and was actually the first Land Rover sold in Hereford and Worcester, but its restoration was delayed by the arrival of a Tickford coachbuilt station wagon, KYM 725.
“I bought that off John Smith,” he told Peter Galilee. “It was all in bits but it was interesting.” Ken hadn’t done any coachbuilding before and described the project as “a pig that took me nine months to complete.” On its first outing at the Thornes Park Rally in Wakefield it disgraced itself by dropping a valve seat and had to be towed home, but such irritations did not deter Ken and the Tickford was soon a reliable and regular vehicle on the show circuit, securing yet more trophies for the display cabinet.
Ken still kept his ear to the ground for news of any preproduction vehicles that might be available and was finally able to persuade Midlands car dealer and long-term Land Rover enthusiast Jim Cooknell to part with pre-pro L19, which hadn’t run in over 20 years. Work had meanwhile begun on the Hereford and Worcester vehicle and this was completed in time for the 45th anniversary celebrations in 1993, after which it spent nine months in the factory showroom at Solihull.
In the mid-1990s he took on the restoration of KLX 770, an original press demonstrator that was part of the first batch of Land Rovers bought by the Automobile Association in 1949. The AA apparently took an interest in the project and there was talk of it going into a proposed AA museum, but that doesn’t seem to have come to anything. Today, the vehicle resides in the Coventry Transport Museum. Ken’s restorations also include two more Pre-production vehicles and more Tickfords including JDG 135 which is today displayed at the British Motor Museum at Gaydon, while four more of his vehicles are in the Landypoint Collection in Germany including his first Tickford, KYM 725.
“Ken also restored GXC 639C, a Series IIA that had been the personal property of Rover’s chairman, Spencer Wilks,” says Roger Crathorne. “The vehicle had remained in the family and was looked after by Spencer’s son, Nick, although by then it needed a total restoration. I thought it was an important vehicle that needed to be saved, and I think it was the only Series II that Ken restored. When it was finished the company finally decided to buy it to add to the heritage fleet. I remember seeing the vehicle at Solihull from time to time when Spencer owned it, and there was an interesting incident when Bill Martin-hurst, Rover’s managing director at the time, visited Spencer at his house on Islay and took the Series II for a drive along the beach. Unfortunately, he got stuck and the tide came in! The vehicle was recovered back to Solihull to be recommissioned, but when I saw it again in Nick’s barn all those years later it was obvious that the factory hadn’t replaced the chassis, which was in a terrible state. Ken, of course, put it all right.
“Land Rover also bought the two ‘Del-boys’ in around 2002 or 2003,” says Roger. “They have since become an important part of the JLR heritage fleet and appear regularly at media and other events, and 438 DEL was also used as the centrepiece of the company’s popular exhibition at the
Solihull visitor centre that replicated the early Series I production line.”
Ken’s own vehicles were never just for show, though. “When I’ve got them restored I like to use them,” he told Peter Galilee in 1994. “I’ve got all six taxed and tested all year. They go on the Tyne-tees run and on the Trans-pennine. Quite regularly I go in them to Halifax or, if it’s a fine day, I’ll go to the reservoir top for a run. It doesn’t do them any good just standing.”
Ken went on to go considerably further afield than Halifax and the reservoir top, though. One of his first trips abroad was to attend a Land Rover rally in Norway. Ken took HAC 942 and came away with the ‘best car’ trophy from a field of 250 vehicles from all over Europe. In August 1998 he took the restored pre-pro L19 to a rally at Samedan in Switzerland that was organised to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the International Gliding Championships held there in 1948. This was the first world gliding competition after the end of the war as well as an important part of early Land Rover history, as it was probably the first overseas expedition for the new Land Rover. The Rover Company loaned four Prepro vehicles to the British team and these were used to tow three 30 feet Rice trailers containing the team’s gliders from Surrey to Samedan and back, a journey of some 1500 miles.
Alan Lowther was a close friend of Ken’s for many years and accompanied him on many of his UK and overseas events. “One of the first I went on was the trip to Samedan, and we had a wonderful time and met a lot of like-minded folk. The only issue really was that the organiser had planned the trip on the basis that we’d drive around 200 miles a day, and that was stretching things a bit in a pre-pro Land Rover! I was in the motor trade at the time and Ken soon had me helping out with the restorations. I usually did the brake pipes but I also built the engines for three or four of the first restorations that Ken did.”
In September 1998 Ken drove to Epen near Maastricht in the Netherlands, to participate in a 50th anniversary event organised by Dutch members of the LRSOC and the Land Rover Register, among them the Houben family who are also renowned Land Rover collectors and restorers. Ken and his nephew, Alan, drove to the rally in one of the most remarkable of Ken’s projects, the recreation of a Leyland Beaver lorry that had been owned by Rover and used to deliver new Land Rovers to the docks. In the immediate post-war years the mantra for British industry was export, to the extent that
government would not release raw materials to companies unless they could demonstrate that the products they were making would sell overseas and earn foreign currency. The Land Rover had been a runaway export success from the outset and Rover was more than happy to shout about this. When it ordered the Leyland and its bespoke matching trailer to be built, both were signwritten not only with the company’s logo but with prominent script that read ‘Helping Britain’s Export Drive’.
Ken and his nephew Alan found a suitable Beaver-based mobile X-ray unit to use as the basis for the project, and the result was a stunning replica of Rover’s transporter that proved to be extremely popular when it appeared at shows, especially when Ken’s immaculate Land Rovers were displayed on the back. It was subsequently bought by a German collector and returned briefly to the UK in 2015 to participate in JLR’S display and parade at the Goodwood Revival, organised to mark the coming end of Defender production, and rumour has it that is was offered to JLR in exchange for a new Defender Works V8! JLR didn’t bite and the Leyland returned to Germany. It was advertised for sale in 2019 with a price tag of £200,000.
In 2013 Land Rover celebrated its 65th anniversary with an amazing event at Packington Park, a country estate close to the Solihull factory that had been used for testing the original pre-production vehicles in 1948. An astonishing display of Land Rover vehicles was assembled and many thought it was a great pity that none of this was available for enthusiasts to see, because only the world’s media were invited. One of the vehicles on display was the newly completed chassis, axles, bulkhead, engine and gearbox of a 1952 Series I. It was Ken’s 31st Land Rover restoration, and he was a guest of honour at the event and much in demand for photographs and interviews.
In recent years several of Ken’s restored Series I vehicles have been sold publicly, most of them through Williams Classics Ltd of Conwy, although others have changed hands behind closed doors. Interest in early Land Rovers has grown massively over the last five years, and some commentators have suggested that a shiny Series I has become the new must-have vehicle for any serious collector of classic cars, even if all it does is sit gleaming in the corner of their motor houses. JLR themselves jumped on the bandwagon when their Classic Works business launched its Reborn programme, offering factory-restored Series I vehicles with prices starting at over £70,000 and considerably higher for a 1948 or 1949 model.
In May 2015 a 1952 80-inch, newly restored by Ken and Frank, was offered for sale at auction and smashed its £26,000 to £28,500 pre-sale estimate to sell for almost £40,000, and values have increased dramatically since then. “I met Ken when I was about ten years old,” says Miles Williams, owner of Williams Classics Ltd. “I was already mad about Land Rovers and Ken was a great inspiration to me. I learned a lot from him about restoring vehicles to concours standards, and Ken was really the catalyst that led to me setting up a business that specialises in the very best vehicles for enthusiasts and collectors. I’ve been delighted to handle all the sales of newly completed ‘Ken Wheelwrights’ over the past five years or so.
“Despite his reputation as one of the world’s leading restorers of early Land Rovers, Ken remained a down-toearth Yorkshireman and a true gentleman,” says Philip Bashall, who is no slouch himself when it comes to Land Rover restorations. “I knew Ken well and called in at his farm in the Pennines quite often. He and Doris always welcomed visitors with open arms, and Doris’s breakfasts were legendary! Ken was really the first person to restore early Land Rovers to concours show condition at a time when everyone else was more concerned with working vehicles.” And was there ever any rivalry, I ask? “There was some goodnatured competitiveness among those of us that were restoring early vehicles, and there were certainly some disagreements about what constituted factory-spec authenticity,” says Philip. “I remember a lengthy conversation about why Ken was painting his engine blocks light green, when I thought they should be dark blue-green for vehicles made before 1954/55, and after that light grey. When I presented him with the evidence he shrugged his shoulders and said ‘well, I’ve always painted them light green’, followed by that wonderful cackle of his. And that was the end of the discussion!”
Sadly, Ken passed away in late 2018. Many of his lifelong friends from among the Land Rover community attended his funeral on November 16 to pay their respects, and in a fitting tribute to Ken’s restoration skills Michael Bishop of JLR Classic Works ensured that 438 DEL was there. The Wheelwright restoration business continues in the hands of Ken’s son-in-law, Frank, although he’s very modest about his involvement and describes himself as ‘the apprentice of 25 years’! Mary has the last word, though, and says that for the past ten years Ken had said to her that he had now become Frank’s apprentice. It’s good to know that the pursuit of perfection that defines a ‘Ken Wheelwright’ is in safe hands.