Land Rover Series One

Image from Timothy Large / Shutterstock.com

Land Rover Series One

One of my current projects is the patch-up of a 1953 Land Rover. This car is the last of the original (and very short), 80 inch wheelbase Series One model that ran from the introduction of the Land Rover in 1948 until 1953 when the long wheel base model was introduced and the short wheel base model grew six inches longer to allow more than a few tools in the back (as in the picture above).

Mine has sat out in the weather on the farm for more than twenty-five years and was already in poor shape when it arrived here in the 1980s. It came to the farm fitted with a two and a quarter litre four cylinder petrol motor out of a later model Land Rover. This motor seized years ago. I am about to replace it with a reconditioned motor of the same (non-original) vintage, out of a rusty Series 2 wreck. What was left of the Land Rover’s mottled paint has been stripped using my own technique of applying chemical paint stripper and then blasting off the old paint, and the stripper, with a pressure washer. This has proved very effective with the Series One, probably helped by the poor bond between the paint and the car’s slippery aluminium body.

Along with its replacement motor, the Series One will be treated to a new set of brake cylinders and some new tyres and it will be ready to work on the farm again. Its current bar tread tyres have plenty of tread left, but after 30 years in the Australian sun, they are starting to split in a way that suggests that, without a replacement, I will end up with a puncture in the front paddock some hot afternoon.

This Series One Land Rover is known as “The Thingy”. It is so called because as a Land Rover obsessed boy, I had taken to enthusiastically pointing out any Land Rover that I spotted from the family station wagon. Finally my parents, driven mad by my excited exclamations of “There’s a Land Rover” every time we passed a battered Series 2A sitting in a paddock or a tired Series 3 tacking slowly up the highway,  banned me from uttering the term “Land Rover” until further notice. Shortly after, I saw another of Solihull’s finest. With enthusiasm that caused me to initially forget the ban, I pointed out the car window and an announced “There’s a … um ……..thingy”. From then on, the family’s first Land Rover was sure to be called “The Thingy”.

It was bought for the princely sum of $500 and, at the time, there was no thought given to it being a potentially collectible Series 1. Instead, it was purchased to feed out hay to horses down a muddy and rough bush track. This is it did very well. However, we learned quickly that, while four wheel drive and bar tread tyres are excellent in providing forward progress in poor conditions, they can also combine to speedily bog a car when things are dire. They can dig four deep holes very, very quickly. A Land Rover bogged to the floor in sticky mud can take some getting out and the task is no fun in the pouring rain, on a cold night when you need to be elsewhere.

YOUR VIEW?

Should Series One Land Rovers be restored to concourse standard, or even to reasonable originality, or are their dents and modifications part of the charm? Please, post a comment.