Land Rover: The Story of the Car that Conquered the World. Ben Fogle

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       HISTORY OF THE LAND ROVER

      PART I

      The story of the Land Rover begins way back in the dark days of the Second World War. Although the Amsterdam Motor Show of April 1948 is regarded as the birthplace of the marque, it was actually conceived much earlier. The vehicle that started it all had a very long gestation period, brought about by fate – and the war. Look closely at the red-brick walls of the office block at Land Rover’s famous factory in Solihull, on the outskirts of Birmingham, and you can still see traces of the camouflage paint applied during the 1939–45 conflict. The idea behind this paint job was to confuse Luftwaffe bombers, and presumably it worked, because while nearby Coventry was flattened the Solihull factory survived intact.

      Rover had been building cars in Coventry since 1901, but the war changed its fortunes. In 1940, after the Coventry factory was destroyed by the German Luftwaffe’s blanket bombing of that city, Rover continued production of aero engines for the war effort at a government shadow factory – a few miles away at Solihull. The company was so successful that after the war the factory looked for new, civilian projects to keep its staff employed.

      Steel was required to rebuild a war-torn world, but it was in short supply. Like everything else in post-war Britain, this metal was strictly rationed. What the country desperately needed was earnings from exports; to get steel, companies had to export 75 per cent of what they manufactured. That was a tall order, even for a successful car manufacturer like Rover, which had earned a comfortable living by selling plush saloon cars to the middle classes on the domestic market in the pre-war years. Now, although new models were planned, its 1930s designs were outdated and didn’t appeal to British motorists, let alone overseas buyers. It seemed that Rover had little chance of persuading the government to allocate the all-important steel it needed. But there was, on the other hand, mountains of aluminium left over from the aircraft industry, if only somebody could find a use for it …

      Although quirky four-wheel-drive cars had been in existence since the early years of the twentieth century, it was in the late 1930s, with the rise of Hitler’s Nazi Germany and Japan’s imperial ambitions, and when war looked inevitable, that a go-anywhere utility vehicle became a necessity. The Americans realised that they were eventually likely to get involved in the European conflict, so the US government invited tenders for the 4×4 military vehicle that would eventually become the Jeep (designed by the American Bantam Car Co and Willys-Overland, but eventually built by both the latter company and, under licence, Ford).

      The Jeep played a major part in resolving the war in the Allies’ favour, and when peace was declared in 1945 there was no shortage of takers for the vehicles that had inevitably been left behind in Europe, now surplus to military requirements. These all-terrain vehicles were particularly popular with farmers – and gentleman-farmer Maurice Wilks was no exception.

      In the overgrown graveyard of St Mary’s Church at Llanfair-yn-y-Cwmwd, on the Isle of Anglesey, North Wales, is the weathered gravestone of Maurice Wilks, which reads: ‘A much-loved, gentle, modest man whose sudden death robbed the Rover company of a chairman and Britain of the brilliant pioneer who was responsible for the world’s first gas turbine driven car.’

      Like the man himself, the inscription is modest, for it fails to mention the invention for which he is best known – the Land Rover.

      Wilks died in 1963, aged just 59. In his all-too-short life he also helped to develop Frank Whittle’s original jet engine, but he will forever be remembered for creating the motor car that took the world by storm. Nobody back in the 1940s, 50s and 60s could have predicted how the utilitarian little 4×4 would one day become the car of the stars. When Wilks died, even his family underestimated the importance of the Land Rover. They thought he’d be best remembered for his contribution to Rover’s ill-fated gas turbine car, which is why that got mentioned on his gravestone and the Land Rover didn’t.

      Maurice, engineering director at the Rover car company, owned a rugged 250-acre coastal estate at Newborough, on the island of Anglesey, which was made more accessible thanks to his own ex-US Army Jeep. The truth was, he thoroughly enjoyed the experience of 4×4 off-road driving. Old home movies still in the possession of the Wilks family show him driving it at every opportunity. Whenever he was able to escape the hustle and bustle of the Rover factory for the wilderness of Anglesey, the man and his machine were seldom parted.

      One day, his brother Spencer, Rover’s managing director, asked him what he would do when the battered warhorse eventually wore out. ‘Buy another one, I suppose – there isn’t anything else,’ was his fateful reply.

      Legend has it that the Wilks brothers were relaxing on the beach at the time – at Red Wharf Bay in Anglesey, to be precise – and Maurice began drawing a picture of his ideal 4×4 in the sand. Unsurprisingly, it looked very much like his Jeep. It wasn’t long before the rough sketch became reality, though, for the brothers reckoned there was a definite niche for a civilian version of the Jeep, and they decided to build it at Solihull.

      Again, circumstances played their part. With steel strictly rationed, Rover decided to create the new vehicle’s bodywork from Birmabright aluminium alloy panels. The steel box-section chassis was born of necessity, with strips of steel cast-offs hand-welded together to create a ladder frame. As well as being cheaper to install than a heavy press or expensive sheet steel, it also achieved the level of toughness appropriate for an off-road utility vehicle. Astonishingly, the same basic ladder-frame chassis was used throughout the production of the Series Land Rovers, as well as the Defenders, right up until the manufacture of the last cars in January 2016. The ladder-frame chassis was also the backbone of the first- and second-generation Range Rovers (1970–2002), Discovery 1 and 2 (1989–2003) and the various military specials and forward controls produced at Solihull.

      The new 4×4 planned by the Wilks brothers also had great export potential. In 1947, British schoolchildren still toiled in classrooms in which a map of the world took pride of place on the wall, one that showed more than half of the land mass coloured pink – denoting countries that were either British colonies or former colonies (by then part of the British Commonwealth). The sun had not yet set on the British Empire and there were plenty of colonial outposts in the developing world where Rover’s projected new all-terrain vehicle would prove an invaluable mode of transport. So although the first Land Rover was designed with the British farmer in mind, its versatility meant that it would be a brilliant workhorse anywhere on the planet where the going was likely to get tough. (And it still is. For example, in the remote Cameron Highlands of Malaysia, extremely battered Land Rover Series Is are even today the main mode of transport in the tea plantations, including some very early 80-inch models, which would be worth a fortune as ‘garage finds’ СКАЧАТЬ