Behind the Steering Wheel [courtesy Rovers North News]
By Jeffrey B. Aronson
Following on the heels of our snowiest winter, New England as a whole - and Maine in particular - has experienced its wettest summer in decades. Wales would feel like a desert environment compared to Maine this past season. If summer had about 90 days, 80 of them felt damp and wet.
I remove my Wellington boots so as not to dirty the bed, but they go back on for the simplest of chores and remain on all day. My front yard looks like a rice paddy. Hilly fields remain soggy at the top of their slopes. The dawn’s early light barely glows through the constant fog. The mosquito population has quadrupled. Work has become a slog through the big muddy and life in low range.
Wellingtons, mud and wet weather; New England certainly resembles Olde England. What a great time to own a Land Rover. The earliest road tests for Land Rovers extolled their off road and towing ability. Magazine advertisements always showed Rovers in farm scenes hauling huge wagons of hay, feed, cattle, horses or heavy milk cans. With four wheel drive and an excellent set of low range ratios, any Series I/II/II-A/III Land Rover could tow a heavy load through any field conditions.
A 1951 magazine ad stated “On Estate or Farm, there is no end of the jobs which can be done – quicker and easier – with the Land-Rover. Built for toughness and durability, it constitutes a four-wheel drive tractor, a mobile power plant, a towing and delivery wagon and a fast economical vehicle on the road. It is the ideal maid-for-all-work on estates and farms and can operate in places where no other wheeled vehicle could approach. The Rover pulls everything – apart from its own carrying capacity, the Land-Rover will drive a trailer load much in excess of its own weight.”
Until this year I had rarely towed anything more than a parade float or small boat in my 19 years of Land Rover ownership. Caretaking an increased number of properties forced me to purchase lawn mowers the size of a Freelander and additional carpentry gear. I wound up with a trailer nearly the length of the QE I. It’s opened up a new appreciation for the original owners of Land Rovers and the ways they lived and worked with their vehicles.
My aluminum trailer does not weigh very much when empty, but as it has no springs, it pounds everything inside on roads with potholes, e.g., any road on this island. When filled with the mowing machinery and the work crew that I tend to haul around, I find myself rowing the gearshift more going up and down the hills. I’ve also learned a lot more about engine braking; it’s vital so as not to tax the drum brakes on the II-A.
The trailer clings constantly to my Rover, much like a needy child attaches itself to its parent. It drags behind me as it were clinging to my leg. Wherever I go it follows, noisily announcing its presence behind me. If I try and do something simple, like backing up, its excessive length magnifies every move I make with the steering wheel – often taking me in a direction that I prefer not to take. Like having a kid you must remember that it’s always there and never forget its impact on otherwise simple tasks like rounding a corner or parking on a street.
Turning a trailer requires you to look back and while turning the wheel in the opposite direction. I’ve spent decades dismissing the claim that Land Rovers might require power steering – until now that I have to maneuver a loaded trailer. Heaving my old banjo wheel from lock to lock feels like I’m pulling up an anchor line, one snagged smartly on an immovable rock.
At times, I wish I had a 109” so I could carry more gear, but not when maneuvering the loaded trailer. Then I wish I could get angry and become the Incredible Hulk. The 88” wheelbase can still feel too long when I’m backing the loaded trailer into a muddy corner of a field. That’s when I wish I had an 80” Series I.
I’ve often wondered why the first Rovers had a short 80” wheelbase. Yes, I know the Wilks’ copied the dimensions of a Jeep frame as a starting point, but there are other reasons. Tax regulations based on engine displacement leads to smaller vehicles; why move around a large, empty pickup truck when you can add a trailer to a smaller vehicle anytime you need the extra carrying capacity? Open bed pickups make some sense in relatively dry climates, but make little sense in wet, damp regions of the world; why else do so many British farmers use the Ifor Williams metal caps on their Rover pickups?
So it makes sense that British farmers and tradesmen would hitch a trailer to the back of their Rover when they needed the extra carrying capacity rather than moving around a lot of extra weight unnecessarily. In the land of $9.00/gallon petrol, it makes sense to be as efficient as possible.
Living and working with the QE I in these muddy, wet conditions demonstrates the brilliance of the engineering ideas put together by the Wilks brothers. A 1974 ad asked “Where do old Land-Rovers go? To work.” A photo shows a Series I 107” loaded with hay and quotes the farm manager; “it’s 18 years old, it’s done 118,000 miles and it’s still in super condition. We’ve never taken the cylinder head off. It does real donkey work, hauling 6-ton hay loads and transporting cattle – even to London for the Smithfield Show. If a tractor gets into difficulty, the Land-Rover pulls it out. There’s no trouble with rust, it’s very economical, and the repair bills are nil. We’ve had yeoman service all the way.”
As dawn breaks I can see my II-A’s outside, one hitched to its trailer, both dripping with this morning’s rainfall. Yeoman service, indeed – what great cars!
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Of course, I could opt for the 2010 Range Rover instead. Autoweek reports that the new Range Rover offers the “the world's first (in a production car) adaptive damping system that measures the road ahead of the vehicle and adjusts the suspension accordingly.” Bigger brakes, a new stability and roll-control system, and two new direct injection 5.0 liter V-8’s – supercharged to 510 hp or a milder 375 hp without – and some interior touchups will arrive with next year’s models.
Autoweek states “it all works fantastically, we must say. Both new Rovers are quick--the normally aspirated model is almost as fast as the old supercharged model while the new supercharged model is a rocket ship. If anything, Land Rover's 5.9 second 0-to-60-mph claim seems conservative. The suspension changes and electronic gizmos make the new Rover almost flingable, considering its near 6,000-pound weight. Pushed into corners, the truck feels controlled and body roll is minimal (again, considering other huge utes). Out on the open road, it's smooth and serene. And, of course, the thing will go damn near anywhere. In Spain, we drove it over rocks, up rock walls, down hills, through mud--it took everything we could throw at it.”
Hmm…might be easier to use as a work vehicle, but with prices ranging from $79,525 to $95,125, I’ll probably stick with the II-A’s ____________________
For many Land Rover enthusiasts Africa provides the perfect venue for the values of the marque. In late July, much of the continent celebrated the completion of Seacom, an undersea cable that connects east Africa in particular with worldwide internet resources at what should be a reasonable cost. Satellite services work well but have high monthly costs; cellular communication and data services have transfer and speed limits. If the Land Rover (along with Peugeot and Mercedes) helped transform the movement of people and goods in post-WW II Africa, this cable might help transform the movement of ideas to 21rst century Africa.
Just as importantly this exchange might help Africa magnify the impact it makes on people worldwide. Megan Stewart, 28, an agricultural missionary from Melbourne, FL, wrote in the New York Times that “the animals and everything are great, but the thing that blows me away is the culture of Africa. It’s definitely very real and tangible. Everything’s more difficult: for example, in Botswana, it’s very common to walk a couple of miles to get to a destination. But when you’re walking a mile to get somewhere, which I have done in Africa many times, you feel your surroundings. There’s more of a fullness of life. When you’re in America and you’re driving in your car, you can’t even remember buildings that you pass by most of the time. In Africa, you see everything."
Thanks to Louise Orlando and Andrew Barbour a Rovers North News’ four-part series illuminated the majesty of this enormous continent for every reader. As Louise wrote in her opening article “we lay on our sleeping bags on the roof of the Land Rover, looking up at the most brilliant night sky either of us had ever seen.”
In previous years Mike Ladden told readers of his “Vintage Rovers Across Africa” expeditions through West Africa and found himself barely able to describe its impact on his life to someone – like me – who had never been there. In 1999 Samantha Schroeder shared her trip to Kenya and Tanzania with the Rovers North News, and noted that “my professor at Yale told my group that ‘you can deal with your memories of East Africa in three ways. One is to live it to the point that you can’t function in your new setting. The second is to compartmentalize the experience, to stash it way in certain storage spaces of your brain reserved for those few who would understand. The third is to synthesize the experience into your daily life.’ “
For Samantha, her first hour in Kenya found her “mesmerized by the colors and the smells and the sounds of my surroundings. It was as if the dial to my senses had been turned up a few notches and I was seeing the world through new eyes – at once exciting and frightening. From my trip I learned that life is the journey itself, and one worth believing in. I learned this in smoke filled huts and upturned Rovers and even a riot filled city. And when I think back to my days in East Africa now, above all I still picture myself on top of that Land Rover, a volcano at my back, exiting the Garden of Eden.”
12 years ago, Frank Gampietro summed up his experience that “I’ve been back home for only a few months now. I miss Africa terribly; since I’ve returned I realize that it’s already become a vital part of me.”
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Rob Sass (New York Times, Sports Car Market Magazine) wrote of the death of Peter Wheeler, a one-time chemical engineer who took over the TVR sports car company in Blackpool. Sass wrote that “he embodied a spirit of individualism that gave TVR its spark, and although he made the company only a modest success, he produced some exciting cars, like the Tuscan, Cerbera and Griffith. His type of ownership is fading quickly from the automotive scene.”
Here’s hoping that whatever its corporate ownership, Land Rover will remember the spirit of individualism that gave the company its spark, too. No other manufacturer has produced a lineup of “change agent” models like the Series Rovers, the Range Rovers, the 90/110/Defenders, and Discoverys/LR3’s. When you’re a small manufacturer like Land Rover, you can’t afford investing in an Edsel – every model must be a success. Meanwhile, I’ll keep my Series II-A’s working every day.
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