4x4

DEMOB HAPPY

T

here are people who love anything with a

Land Rover badge. There are others who

used to love anything with a Land Rover

badge, and who as a consequence now

hate everything with a Land Rover badge that’s

been made since early 2016.

And there are others, too. Those who aren’t

part of the whole tribal thing – but to whom the

charm and simple honesty of an old-school Land

Rover engenders a fondness no other vehicle

can match.

There’s no doubting the fact that more Land

Rovers than ever before deserve to be seen as

classics. But paradoxically, those are exactly the

ones that and are still at their best when you’re

using them off-road. Land Rover enthusiasts

never wanted their vehicles to turn into valuable

classics – but the mechanical rawness and

wonderful lack of frills that once saw them turn

from working tools into treasured toys also gave

them an emotional appeal that has long since

started turning them from treasured toys into

part of Britain’s heritage.

What this means is that their owners need to

shoulder the responsibility of preserving them. If

you owned a Picasso, you wouldn’t take it out of

its frame and brighten up your garden by glueing

the canvas to the side of your shed, would you?

Similarly, the days when people would cut up

Series trucks and Mk1 Range Rovers to create

DIY hybrids because they couldn’t afford a 90

are long gone.

Which is ironic, because these days 90s and

110s are probably less affordable than they’ve

ever been before. Even those without any great

AUGUST 2019 | 49