A couple of years ago my wife decided that although she had some horses, the
other twin peak of country living was missing. So, she declared, we must
rush out immediately and buy what everyone calls “a proper old Land Rover”.
I do not understand the appeal. It offers what’s best described as Sealed Knot
motoring, giving its devotees an idea of what life might be like if they had
to go about their daily business wearing a full suit of armour. It’s like an
automotive Aga: big, heavy, cumbersome and completely ill at ease with
itself in the modern age.
Having said that, Richard Hammond is a big fan of old Land Rovers, though
because he’s only 5ft 1in tall his is fitted with Cuban heels in the shape
of elongated red springs and some high-chair struts.
The F-reg car that my wife bought for £4,000 was much better than that. It had
silent air screamers on the front wings, which, as air passes through them,
emit a shriek that’s audible only to any deer or bears that might be in the
road up ahead. It also had tyres on it that were wider than anything found
on a Lambo, and even more knobbly than the Singing Detective’s face.
Apparently it had once belonged to the Swiss army, which was also tremendous.
It meant it couldn’t have seen much action.
And because of its military pedigree it had full camouflage paintwork, super
black tinted windows, an SA80 clipped to the dash and a 20ft aerial at each
corner. It also had a metal roof that could be removed in as little as two
days, providing you had six friends to help you, and a small crane.
Mind you, this was not the biggest drawback. No, the biggest drawback was the
fact that under the bonnet it had a paraffin stove. It was — and I’m not
exaggerating here — the slowest car ever made. And so, when it was charged
with the task of towing a horsebox laden with Evo-Stick and Araldite — or
whatever it is my wife’s horses are called — it would barely move at all.
Once, on a not-too challenging hill outside Chipping Norton, it just stopped.
Honestly, there was more horsepower in the trailer.
This caused many rows. Last year, for instance, I set off in it on December 10
to buy a Christmas tree and I didn’t get back till April.
I hated that car. I hated the heavy steering, and the fact that every time you
closed the door it smashed your shoulder into several small pieces. I hated
the lack of legroom, and the way the 1.5 horsepower paraffin stove managed
to make more noise than the Hoover dam.
Passengers, too, were worried about the sharp edges in the cabin, which they
reckoned would be a serious issue in a crash. Chance would be a fine thing;
you need to have some speed to have an accident, and our Land Rover wouldn’t
even go fast enough to get the air screamers working. Not that this was a
problem, because even if you came round a corner at full speed, a tortoise
would have time to amble out of your way.
Eventually I won the day and my wife agreed to swap this stupid car for one
with an engine. A big one.
You can buy V8 Land Rovers. They were made from time to time and for various
foreign markets. But they are rare and consequently expensive.
Don’t despair, though, because there are plenty of Land Rovers lying around,
and plenty of old V8 engines. So we simply bought the two entities — for
next to nothing — and asked a man we knew to join them together.
I should explain that the V8 we found was not a 3.5 litre. Richard Hammond has
a 3.5 in his stepladder, so we got ourselves a 3.9, which is much better.
It’s also fitted with carburettors so, if it goes wrong — and it will
because it was made by communists — it can be fixed with the only item in my
toolkit. A hammer.
Apparently it’s very easy to fit a V8 into a Land Rover and even easier to fit
a lever on the dash that directs the exhaust gases either down past the
catalytic converters and the silencer, or if you pull it, along a length of
ventilation tubing. No silencing. No cats. Just 5mpg and without doubt the
best noise in the world.
And because we’ve fitted all the cool military stuff from the previous model,
it looks pretty snazzy as well.
However, despite all the noise and the brouhaha and the “don’t mess with me”
combat exterior, it still accelerates with the verve and pizzazz of a coral
reef.
Maybe this is an unavoidable problem. Maybe the Land Rover is like a heavy and
unwieldy deep-sea diving suit; you can fill it with the world’s fittest and
strongest man but he’s still not going to win any running races.
To find out, I borrowed a new Land Rover. It came with electric windows and
heated seats and lots of other creature comforts, and it was finished in a
natty silver paint job that made it look very Camden Town.
It also had a relatively modern five-cylinder turbodiesel engine that produces
lots and lots of torque. You can feel it when the turbo blows, like a
herculean inner strength, an invisible trebuchet that would be capable of
freeing you and your suit of armour from the pit of any bog, from the jaws
of nature’s iciest grip.
But power? No. It still hasn’t got any. You have to drive everywhere with your
rear-view mirror full of headlights dancing hither and thither as people
behind look desperately for a way past.
It also has a set of gear ratios that may be fine in Swaledale in February but
are no good anywhere else. Often fourth isn’t enough to get you up a hill,
so you drop down to third and it feels as though you’ve been hit in the back
with a wrecking ball. All of a sudden you’re doing 35mph but your eight-ton
suit of armour, making a noise that sounds like the birth of the universe,
has come to an almost dead stop.
What’s more, there still isn’t enough room behind the wheel for anyone with
shoulders or legs, there are still sharp edges, it’s as bouncy as a small
dog at suppertime, and as a result it’s about as much fun to drive as a
punctured wheelbarrow. And it’s not like the misery is short-lived, because
each trip to the shops can, and does, take two or three weeks.
So why, in the name of all that’s holy, doesn’t Land Rover simply stop making
the Defender and replace it with something that actually works? Something
that’s still designed for Swaledale but has space for your shoulders. I’ll
tell you why. It’s because they’re suffering from a British disease called
Mini Syndrome.
All of us are terrified of change. It’s why the Royal Navy’s second world war
battleships were so crap, because rate of fire was what won the day at
Trafalgar, so rate of fire was always going to be more important than size
of shell, or indeed accuracy, or armour plating for that matter.
It’s why we have a royal family. Of course it’s nonsense to hand over the
reins of the nation to someone just because they were born in a castle. But
hey, we always have done and look what happened when His Toniness replaced
the hereditary peers in the House of Lords with a cash for honours system .
. .
Then you have the Mini. For years the original version soldiered on because to
change it would mean ditching 40 years of tradition. And that wouldn’t have
been on.
As a result the company went bust and along came the Germans, who demonstrated
with the new Mini that tradition doesn’t necessarily mean driving to work in
the automotive equivalent of rickets.
We see exactly the same with the “proper old Land Rover”. It’s rubbish:
uncomfortable, slow, impractical and with prices starting at £20,000, not
that cheap. But nobody has the courage to pull the plug on a 60-year
tradition, and start again. But somebody should.
VITAL STATISTICS
Model Defender 90 Td5 Station Wagon
Engine 2495cc, five cylinders
Power 122bhp @ 4200rpm
Torque 221 lb ft @ 1950rpm
Transmission Five-speed manual, 4x4
Fuel 28.2mpg (combined cycle)
CO2 282g/km Acceleration Figure not available
Top speed 87mph
Price £20,540
Rating Two stars (out of five)
Verdict Back to the bad old days
