Trevor’s Rack
It’s been around longer than most of his cars, and is now on the D4
OVER my years of owning and driving various Land Rover Discovery 2 models, I have had an on-off relationship with roof racks. On my first Td5 Discovery 2, I had an aluminium roof rack manufactured and fitted by Patriot Products Ltd (Patriot Roof Racks), complete with rear door access ladder. The Patriot roof rack is a very well-designed and engineered product and it stayed on my Discovery for the rest of the time I owned the vehicle. I removed the roof rack prior to putting the Discovery up for sale.
The next Discovery 2 that I owned was a Td5 automatic model. I bought this one when I broke my foot and wanted to keep mobile during the 10-week healing process. The Patriot roof rack did not immediately get fitted to the automatic Discovery – it was only when I had to carry something or other for a long distance on the roof, did I fit my aluminium roof rack.
This process repeated through the ownership of at least three more Discovery 2s that I owned. I would take off the rack when I sold the car and fit it to the next one when a job came up for it – and there it stayed for the rest of my ownership of that particular Discovery.
Why did I own so many Discovery 2 models? Let’s just say that I used to be undecided, but now I’m not so sure… The reality was that I parted company with the automatic one because I didn’t like the performance of the auto ’box (and later discovered that Ashcroft Transmissions could have sorted that for me) and Richards Chassis Ltd wanted me to fit its prototype D2 chassis back in 2012, so I bought a car that I preferred for the job, with a suitably rotten chassis.
The green D2 that was the first one to be fitted with a new Richards Chassis was sold to make way for another LRM project – where I converted from V8 petrol to a 2.8-litre TGV diesel engine. And so on.
Discovery 2 ownership came to an end with me in November 2020 – after buying, driving and selling at least six different examples – when I purchased my Discovery 4 Commercial. The venerable Patriot roof rack was stored in the barn and perhaps I would eventually get around to selling it? A
few months after purchasing the fine Discovery 4, a need for a roof rack arose again. A client of mine wanted a new Patriot roof rack for his 110 but, with the advent of Brexit, shipping his new rack to Northern Ireland had become ridiculously expensive.
I telephoned Paul Howgarth at Patriot to say that I would collect the 110 roof rack but would not fit it into the Discovery 4. Not a problem, said Paul, he would adapt my old Discovery 2 rack to fit the new car. The old rack was temporarily strapped to the Discovery 4, to be taken to Paul after it had received a coat of black 2K paint. This was on account of the fact that my Land Rover paint guru – Anthony O’neill – forbade me from fitting it to the shiny Discovery 4 in its aged and tarnished state.
Paul at Patriot made six fabulous aluminium brackets that attached the old original rack to my roof rails. I couldn’t have been more impressed with the quality. We now have a fairly regular thing going, where I collect Patriot roof racks for Irish customers and bring them home when I’m in England collecting Land Rover chassis, thus avoiding the dreaded shipping costs. Happy days.