Ordinarily extraordinary
Nick Dimbleby investigates a remarkable pre-production base model Discovery 3
OVER the past few years a very different type of classic car show has gained popularity. Called the Festival of the Unexceptional (or ‘Concours de l’ordinaire’), this annual show celebrates the everyday cars that were made in the thousands, but you never see any more. The stars of this show are the ordinary and the mundane, the type of vehicles that you used to see everywhere all of the time. But once time has taken its toll and they become cheap and outdated, no-one wants them any more, so they slowly disappear into the jaws of the crusher.
As we all know, Land Rovers seem to have longer lives than most types of car, but when you consider how many millions of Land Rovers have been made over the years, and how often you see certain models nowadays, you realise that even Land Rovers can’t escape the inevitable. Ask yourself how many Freelander 1s you have seen recently, and you’ll see what I mean. Don’t forget that this was Europe’s best-selling SUV for most of the early part of the 21st Century, and nowadays they’re getting much scarcer.
Amusingly, some of the vehicles on display at the Concours de l’ordinaire are rarer than the most expensive Ferrari. Who’d have thought that there are more Ferrari 250 GTOS on the road (33) than Talbot Samba convertibles (3). Okay, so the latter figure is based on UK statistics only, but hopefully you get the gist.
With this in mind, the vehicle you see pictured on these pages is a bit of a rarity. It’s a completely original and unmodified Discovery 3, that – having been made in early 2004 – is one of the earliest to be produced on the production line at Solihull. Its VX04 registration plate marks it out as a pre-production car, but look a little closer and you’ll see that it’s also an unusual base model with small wheels, a metal roof and non-xenon headlights. This was the lowest specification Discovery that you could possibly order 15 years ago, and as the Discovery 3 was marketed as a premium product (at least in the UK), it’s very unusual indeed to see such a basic model from this period.
In late 2004, I was fortunate enough to be the photographer for the Discovery 3 press launch up in Scotland, and here the entire fleet consisted of HSE models, available with either the TDV6 diesel or the 4.4-litre normally-aspirated V8. All the vehicles featured leather interiors, the six-speed ZF automatic gearbox, air suspension, 19-inch wheels, seven seats and the newly-released Terrain Response system, that was effectively a ‘dial a terrain’ mode. Before I photographed the vehicle you see here, I’d never seen a Discovery without a Terrain Response dial, let alone one without seven seats. As a right-hand-drive base model, it’s a rare beast indeed.
What makes VX04 DFA really stand out, however, is that most of the other Discovery 3s that rolled down the production line at the same time in late March 2004 (before volume production fully started) have subsequently been scrapped. This is common practice throughout the automotive industry, as these early build vehicles are often manufactured using pre-production or nonconforming parts that may cause warranty or reliability issues later on. Indeed, some pre-build prototypes are simply not allowed to be sold on beyond manufacturer ownership, so it is a mystery how VX04 DFA managed to escape the system and be owned privately.
271st Discovery 3
With a chassis number of 000271 we can reasonably assume that VX04 DFA was the 271st Discovery 3 to roll off the production line, and it may well be the earliest factory-built Discovery still in existence. This early batch of vehicles consists of every type of model derivative possible to allow for production issues to be ironed out. These vehicles are split into ‘TT’ (Tool Tryout) and ‘MB’ (Methods Build) sequences, the MB vehicles coming later in the preproduction product plan. As a low-spec TDV6 manual with 17-inch wheels, cloth seats, coil-spring suspension and five seats, I think it is fair to assume that this vehicle was built to ensure that all the items fitted and worked properly, in the same way as the higher-spec builds with all the bells and whistles would have to be checked, too.
Happily for us, the vehicle still retains its original service book, which allows us to get an idea of VX04 DFA’S early history, although there is a little bit of an anomaly. Page three of the book shows that it was first registered on June 23, 2004, with the Pre-delivery Inspection (PDI) carried out by ‘Land Rover UK Ltd, Lode Lane, Solihull’ a month later with just 72 miles on the clock. Bizarrely, the next entry is the vehicle’s first service, which is dated as being on August 2, again with the familiar ‘Land Rover UK Ltd’ stamp, but this time noting that there was 16,179 miles on the clock.
Doing 16,000 miles quickly is not unusual for these early vehicles, as many of them are sent to engineering teams to do as much mileage as possible, so that they can spot any potential last-minute issues before later vehicles are delivered to customers. However, it’s physically impossible to do 16,000 miles in a week, so it’s more than likely that the PDI was incorrectly dated. Even if the date is a month out, 16,000 miles in five weeks is still going some, but with mileage drivers working around the clock, it is at least possible. Either way, it would have been a good test for the still-to-be-launched vehicle.
After this initial burst of activity, the next entry is just under a year later on June 29, 2005, where the vehicle had its
“The festival of popularity celebrates everyday cars that were made in the thousands but you never see any more, except this car is a bit of a rarity”
next service at 26,529 miles, stamped by Land Rover Gaydon. 10 months later, at 26,836 miles, the stamp reads ‘Yeovil Land Rover’, which was the dealer that purchased the vehicle from Land Rover, then subsequently sold it on.
26,000 miles in the first year, followed by 300 miles the next 10 months gives us an idea that VX04 DFA had served its useful life at Land Rover by June 29, 2005. How it ended up at Yeovil Land Rover is a bit of a mystery, but it’s possible that being a low-spec vehicle meant that it might have been an attractive proposition to a customer who wanted the bare minimum of electronics.
What we do know however, is that the vehicle was subsequently purchased and used by the proverbial one lady owner for the next ten years. The lady owner used it sparingly in the West Country, before it was purchased by another chap, who was a customer of Land Rover specialist Bishop’s 4x4 of Peterborough. Chris Bishop, the owner of Bishop’s 4x4, knows an interesting vehicle when he sees one, and he says that he was first drawn to the vehicle by its originality. He offered to buy the vehicle when the owner wanted to sell, and a few months later it was in his possession.
Despite the base model specification, it’s fantastic that things have been left exactly as they were when it drove out the factory. No-one has been tempted to change the 17-inch wheels for bigger rims, the removable tow bar is still sat in its holder under the boot floor, and the rear loadspace cover (that is often lost or forgotten about after owners take them out) is also in place and fully functional. The interior remains completely original, if not a little in need of a clean with its pale cloth. Chris has fitted seat covers to preserve them as they are (these were taken off for the photos), but a good clean would get the seats looking as good as new, I reckon. Chris has also fitted a sat-nav system in the dashboard, but he has retained the original head unit should any subsequent owner want to reinstate it. What is less easy to rectify is the steering wheel and gear lever that have both become marked over time. Chris reckons that these items are both available new as Genuine Parts, but he has so far resisted changing them, in order to retain the vehicle’s originality.
And it’s this originality, along with its low chassis number, that makes VX04 DFA special. It’s a 15-year-old early-build Discovery 3, that is as original as it was when it left the factory in March 2004. As the majority of the vehicles that were built alongside it were scrapped, and its low-spec build is not one you see very often, this Maya Gold TDV6 is very rare find indeed.