The long wheel base series I and II/IIA Land Rover is a
genuine, solid gold cultural icon. Whenever Madison Avenue or Hollywood
wants to promote an image of exotic, rugged adventure they find one of
these rigs to trot out. Mel Gibson, Kevin Costner, and Stallone all have at
least one. Ralph Lauren has two black ones; the Queen of course, as well
as, naturally, Ross Perot and Ted Turner. They've been in a million movies
(cf. The Gods Must Be Crazy) and I even found a web site listing a whole
page of postage stamps which commemorate the Land Rover! Well. They are
slow and noisy and often little things often go wrong, but, the basic
transportation never fails. I can run it on gas so whimpy you can barely
light it with a match. So, the battery's out. Use the hand crank. Blow a
head gasket? The owners manual suggests"tightly packed Savannah grass" as
a palliative to get you back to Mombassa. My friend Jim Souby cut a head
gasket out of the Whitehorse newspaper in his motel room when he got
stranded up in the Yukon a few years back. Try that in your "sport utility"
vehicle bucko. Unsurprisingly, the original Land Rovers were designed as
farm vehicles; i.e. tractors and can be fitted with a power take off for
some farm implements. When I bought this one about 20 years ago it was
being used as a dumpster. Given up guessing what the paint job is? A male
spawing Brook trout. Eat 'cher heart out Redford.
When you're non- internet friends ask you what the internet is "good
for", or what can they get here that they can't find in a library,
these arcane, special interst subjects like old tractors, odd ball
cars, or wierdo
sports are a great examples. Where
you gonna find a
Landrover part or repair advice, anywhere, anytime? Here are a couple
of nice sites for the care and feeding of
your Roverboy for
instance...
Find our latest rover pins in the
...and who did Land Rover North America get to do their pin for the Camel Trophy (Mongolia '97?)