saloon. One night I was in an SD1 and hadstopped at
Ashbourne to fill up with petrol.We carried ourown supply
in the boot so thatwe couldavoid stopping at petrolstations
and when I got back in the car I couldn’t find thekeys. Alan
Winter set off for the factory in hisRover P6 3500 to get
some help while I fumbled around looking for thekeys,
which after ten minutes Ieventually found under the carpet
in the boot, where they must have fallen out ofmy pocket
while Iwas getting out the petrol cans. I set off after Alan at
full pelt, and after a while I could see his tail lights appearing
and disappearing on theroad ahead. Ieventually caught him
up near Lichfield and he couldn’t believe that I’d done that.I
just told him thatmy SD1 was obviously quicker than his P6!
“As a mileage driver I drove every model of LandRover
from the earliest Range Rovers, the Series III, the 101
including the infamous powered trailer, theStage I 109, the
110 and the 90, and the earliest Discoverys. Iremember
noting inmy report after some lengthy drives in theStage I
V8 that I thoughtwe might have solved the fuel crisis, which
was a hot topic in those days when the tensions in the Middle
East had led to a massive increase in petrol prices in the UK.
Given that onmy night time runs I had been getting 10 mpg
if I was lucky, I suggested that ifwe kept driving them there
would be no fuel left toworry about!
“One of the most interesting times duringmy years asa
mileage driverwas the Beaver Bullet programme in 1986,
when a group of Solihull employees came
together asvolunteers determined to prove that
the recently-launched RangeRover Turbo D
was an accomplished vehicle. It had been
trashed on the BBC’sTop Gear programme and
we were determined to set therecordstraight.
The ideawas to prepare twovehicles for an
attempt onvarious dieselvehiclerecords andI
volunteered to become one of the six drivers.
“In the run up to the attempt on therecords,I
and the other five drivers did a great deal of
practice driving at MIRA to ensurewe were all
confident driving the bank at high speed duringLAND ROVER LEGENDS
thesestrikeswe actually decamped to the Pirelli factory and
continued our testing programme from there.
“In the earlyyears thevehicleswe were testingwere
rare ly fitted with any kind of camouflage, and I think it
was the ProjectJay prototypes thatwere the first to be fitted
with panels thatwere designed to hide the shape of the
vehicle.Four of us in the mileage teamwere taken intoa
secure building at the factory one day to look at the firstJay
vehicles, and aweek laterwe were out testing them. In fact,I
was the first mileage driver to take out aJay, and Iwas always
accompaniedby a back-upvehicle thatwas usually aMorris
Marina estate. TheJay prototypeswere quickly christened
the ‘Breadvans’ because of their disguises but I always found
this quite funny because anyone who got close enough could
immediately see that thevehiclewas based on RangeRover
underpinnings.
“One of theroutine hazards of the jobwas when the police
showed an interest, and thiswas particularly important to
me because I tended to drive as hard and fast as I could,
while others in the teamwere morerespectful of the speed
limits! Therewas one particular constable on the Longnor
loop whowould come after us with the blue lights flashing
on hisFord Escort andwe’d slow down to let him catch up
beforewe pulledover. It was always the same and he’d tell us
it was a quiet night and he’d juststopped us for a chat, and
after ten or 15 minuteswe’d be on ourway!
“Therewas a rather more serious incident whenwe were
testing theJay prototypes one night on theNorth Route and
we were pulledover by the local constabulary. Quite often
the boys in bluewould justwant a sneaky peek at whatever it
was we were testing, but on this occasion one of the officers
took a few photos.We told him that thisreally wasn’t on but
he insisted that theywere just for his use, but oncewe were
back at Solihullwe mentioned it in thereportwe completed
afterevery drive. I heard later that the company took avery
dim view of this and contactwas made at the highest levels
to get the photographsreturned.
“After the LandRover and theRover car mileage teams
were combined, I often foundmyself at the wheel of aRover94 LANDROVER MONTHLY
“As amileagedriver
I drove everymodel
ofLandRoverfrom
the earliestRange
Rovers, the Series III,
the 101 including the
infamous powered
trailer, the 110 and 90
and earliestDiscos”On the MIRAbanking
during therecord-
breakingweekend