Land Rover Turns 60

[cosworth151]

From AutoWeek's Daily Drive e-newsletter:

The first Land Rover was not simply inspired by a Jeep, it was a Jeep, underneath.

This was in 1947, and there were plenty of old Army Jeeps in England. At that time, Maurice Wilks, whose day job was engineering director of Rover, had a farm in Wales. On his farm he had a Jeep (e-i-e-i-o). But his Jeep eventually wore out to the point that he needed a replacement. He was surprised to find there was no replacement other than another surplus Army Jeep. Being a Rover man, he felt there should be something made right there in good old Britain.

At the same time he was looking for a replacement Jeep, he and his brother Spencer, who was managing director of Rover (what a gene pool!), were trying to figure out what the company could build with the extremely limited resources available. The biggest problem with building cars in postwar England was that there wasn't any steel with which to build them. There was plenty of leftover aluminum, though, in the form of airplanes no one needed anymore.

The two circumstances came together like peanut butter and chocolate in a Reese's cup. Jealously eyeing the success of the Standard Motor Company in Coventry, which was cranking out as many Ferguson tractors as it could, the Wilkses decided to build . . . a farm implement.

Maurice dispatched a man posthaste to an automotive salvage yard--a.k.a., a dump--in the Cotswolds to buy two Army surplus Willys Jeeps. These and the aging Welsh Willys were the basis for the first Land Rover prototypes. Wilks put 1.4-liter Rover engines in the prototypes that sent a ground-pounding 48 hp to both front and rear axles. The first units had the steering wheel and driver's seat in the middle, like a tractor, with power takeoffs all over, the idea being that not only would farmers like them, they could be exported to left- and right-hand-drive markets cheaply!

To get around the lack of steel for the body, Wilks used an aluminum-magnesium alloy called Birmabright. Not only was the material in plentiful supply, but it didn't rust. He showed this new "Land Rover" prototype to the world on April 30, 1948, at the Amsterdam Motor Show.

The world liked it.

Since everyone loved the prototype from the Amsterdam show, Rover built it, the production units getting big-block, 1.6-liter fours, 80-inch wheelbases and a sticker price the equivalent of $880. (The center driving position was axed on production models.) It was called the Series I, and it stayed in production almost unchanged for 10 years.

How we got from a vehicle made for farmers to a vehicle sought after by divorced, 50-something real estate agents with bottle-blonde hair and pointy shoes is a long story.