The Land Rover Writer

Behind The Steering Wheel [Courtesy Rovers North News]

 

By Jeffrey Aronson

 

One reason to remain the behind the wheel of a Land Rover are the people you meet as a Rover enthusiast. Maybe you get the same sensation from other marques, but I don=t believe it. A few years ago, I remember parking my Series II-A on the main street of Camden, ME, on a fall day. As I climbed back into the car, I peered into the left side wing mirror and saw a line of Morgans coming down the street. I leaned out the sliding window sighing to myself, Alook at all those Morgans.@. As I gawked, I heard a British voice call out, ABlimey, a Land Rover!@ I met an entirely different response when I came across a brace of Ferraris later that year. This group of Magnum, P.I. wannabes, all outfitted in matching marque regalia, carefully averted their eyes as I pulled into the same service station and drove past their convoy. Too bad - we even share the same premium fuel. My II-A has always pings on regular, too.

 

So it was no surprise this winter when I drove east to Bar Harbor for a long weekend. Pulling out of a gas station on Mt. Desert Island, I spied an early NAS Defender 90 soft top. I was in my TR-7 [see below] so naturally, I missed the Defender at a traffic light. However, I saw it pull into a gas station so I drove in behind him and beeped. Why not? We share the same 5-speed transmission and British Leyland once owned both Land Rover and Triumph. The owner turned, saw no Land Rover, and continued fueling his car. I got out to chat. Turns out I had met Peter Meyer of Hancock, ME, who purchased his quite-used D90 about a year ago. East Coast Rover helped him find it and sort it out. AIt needs work but it runs great and I just love it.@ Of course, there was a Rovers North decal on the rear. A young guy about the size of a cornerback, Pete offers proof that there=s several generations of enthusiasts ahead if Land Rover keeps building the best 4x4xFar.

 

Pete lives in the same region where the recently convicted Martha Stewart likes to hang out in the summertime. One of Pete=s neighbors in Hancock suggested waggishly that Amaybe they should sentence her up here for the winter as punishment.@

 

Even Land Rover=s top brass have been fascinating people. In recent decades, Nick Stephenson, Land Rover=s managing director during the 50^th Anniversary celebrations, took the time to talk with thousands on enthusiasts at the Eastnor Park gathering. He and Dennis Chick even gave this writer time to discuss Land Rover=s hope for North America. Geof Miller, who along with Spen King was instrumental in the design of the original Range Rover, was not only accessible but a genuine enthusiast. You can=t say that about all the people in the automobile business.

 

Closer to home accolades have to be saved for Bill Baker, who recently retired from Land Rover. Denise McCluagge, writing in AutoWeek, called him Aone for the ages.@ Baker served in a variety of management roles for Land Rover in North America and Europe, but all involved promoting the Land Rover name with style, class and elegance. When I met him once, he spoke highly and appreciatively of Rovers North. A skilled off road driver, Baker helped create Land Rover=s Tread Lightly campaign which engaged off roaders in protecting their land while protecting their rights to enjoy that land. McCluggage suggests that Baker=s efforts Aprobably account for the high percentage of Land Rover owners who actually drive on something more challenging than the gravel parking lot of the gold club.@ While only 5% of SUV owners overall go off road with their vehicles, Land Rover owners score 35%.

 

Bill Baker understands that off road involves physical as well as emotional and intellectual challenges. Land Rover=s promotional events often gave something back to the places they explored. From Iceland to Belize, from California to Africa, Land Rovers made positive things happen for communities worldwide. In 1998, I watched Bill and his family negotiate a tight rutted muddy trail in a then-new Freelander on the grounds of Eastnor Castle. In his last term with Land Rover in 2003, he helped launch the newest Freelander on the trails of Catalina Island off California. Denise McCluggage drove on that trip and wrote Awe may remain ignorant of the bars and T-shirt shops in Avalon, Catalina=s port-hugging community, but we can ace the midterm on the [wildlife of] island.@ She suggests that Ahis trips may be emulated but never duplicated. One thing for sure: they will be remembered.@

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I have a question for the Ford people running the Premier Auto Group, or whatever corporate entity controls Land Rover this week. I saw the photos of the Ford Bronco Concept from the North American Auto Show; it=s square, straight sided, rugged and evocative of the original Bronco. It also looks just like an existing Land Rover model - oh, never mind. You probably saw the Hummer H3T concept trucklet, too. It=s square, straight sided, rugged. a sort of Tonka-like two-seater that=s evocative of a Land Rover model - oh, never mind. You know the stir at the SEMA show in Las Vegas when you brought in CKD 110" wheelbase - oh, never mind. As you=ve told us repeatedly, no one is really interested in a Defender. Lots of other Ford-owned marques sell at or above their original sale price of over 10 years ago. Sold many of those Anew@ Thunderbirds recently? How about it, Ford? You don=t need a concept. You need to federalize the Defender.

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On a bitterly cold, clear February morning the Governor of Maine, John Baldacci, settled into the passenger seat of his official car, a Chevy Suburban [hey, this is northern New England! -ed].His driver, a state trooper, began the 60 mile drive from our capital city, Augusta, to our largest, Portland. About 40 miles into the trip on I-95 [like Vermont, we have only two interstates] his driver passed a car at about 70 mph and promptly skidded off the road. The Governor and driver had mild injuries but the $45,000 Suburban had become a candidate for Junkyard Wars. They sheepishly admitted that they might have been traveling too fast for conditions. As writer Cory Farley noted, Asliding off the road is nature=s way of telling you that you=re a dope.@

 

Farley calls the US Aa nation divided by weather.@ As a transplanted coastal Californian he admits he didn=t know the first thing about winter. It took just one snowstorm to teach him the first rule: four wheel drive is God=s own solution to stupidity in slippery conditions. The moment you try to stop you learn rule #2: four wheels with no traction are no better than two wheels with no traction. In reality, the weather doesn=t Acause@ accidents. The driver is responsible for evaluating conditions and adapting to them, not pretending that he can trammel them into submission.

If you off road in your Land Rover, you=ve learned this reality regardless of whether you live in the Snow Belt or the Sun Belt. Either way, you=re the driver so you=re in charge. You can ask your Land Rover to seemingly defy physics, but not overcome it.

 

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With the beginning of baseball=s Spring training, I=ve come to an epiphany - Red Sox fans are to Land Rover what Yankee fans are to Fords.

 

Yes, I know there=s a bevy of Land Rover fanatics in the Empire State. Land Rover once even had its importer headquarters in the City That Never Sleeps. Face it, no one needed to ask where ASex in the City@ was taped. It could only be New York.

 

That attitude pervades New York, whose firms have come to own significant parts of once-independent companies in other parts of the country, such as New England. It=s no surprise that Ford could purchase Land Rover from BMW; after all, the New York Times parent company bought an interest in the Boston Globe, the dominant newspaper in New England.

 

New England baseball fans north of New Haven, CT, tend to be Red Sox fans [except way up near the Canadian border where it=s easier to get to an Expos game [motto - AThe Team That Won=t Die@]. We=re acutely sensitive to the ability of New York to purchase whatever or whoever it wants.

 

So I=m still sensitive to an incident in my >66 Series II-A SW last fall. Late one night on a two lane road in rural Maine, I had been listening to the radio broadcast of the Boston Red Sox‑New York Yankees championship baseball game. The Red Sox - under my telepathic guidance - had held the lead. My headlights illuminated the woods on either side of the narrow road. You could barely exceed 35 mph on its curves.

 

You=ve seen the advertisement many times, the one where a rhinoceros chases a Defender on the savannah. You chuckled until you realized that the rhino, normally a gentle star, threw a tantrum and actually butted the Defender a couple of times during the shooting of the advert.

 

Well, that=s what I remembered with a deer bounded out of the woods and attacked the Rover. It waited until it was just in front of my bumper, cut across the road from the left, and began its assault. I know it was a Yankee deer because I swear I saw the initials NY, crossed just like a Yankees= cap, on its fur. The front bumper lifted the animal into the radiator support and the right front wing, and then off to the side of the road. The radiator support gave way enough to push the radiator into the fan which disabled the car.

 

I ground to a halt, infuriated but unhurt. The road had tall trees and thick woods on either side, offering the skittish deer a perfect hiding spot. Why it chose to bound out in from on my car at that precise moment baffled me. No other car came by for the next 30 minutes. I stepped out of the car and looked around. Antifreeze leaked copiously onto the road; the right wing resembled an origami exercise. The deer lay still, clearly destined to become someone=s mince meat pie.

The deer=s sudden entrance raised suspicions in my mind. By the time the state police and tow truck arrived and I could turn my attention back to the game, the Yankees had stormed ahead and won the game. Clearly the deer, sensing the assistance I had given to Red Sox manager Grady Little, gave up its life to assure a Yankee comeback. While I was tied up with the tow truck, Grady Little left Pedro Martinez in the game through the 8^th inning and, well, the rest is history.

 

Of course, just the week before, I had fully tuned up the Land Rover, installing new points and spark plugs, checking the timing, topping up all fluids from rear differential to front swivel balls. I had even adjusted the brakes. Now the Rover sits awaiting some welding and body work before it can resume its daily service. The radiator support, radiator and fan require replacement. The right front wing might be salvageable with some skilled hammering.

 

I=ve consider myself a buff about animals. I love dogs, ride horses and willingly much out stables and stalls. I mourn gently over road kill. But a horse put my II‑A into a ditch a decade ago and another deer ate my MGB last year. Land Rovers have been chasing, transporting, tracking and otherwise hanging around animals for decades; in my case, hanging around too close for comfort. I don=t think I=ll be renting a video of Bambi soon. Maybe instead, I=ll find a copy of AThe Deer Hunter.@                                                                          

 

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Of course, as long as I=m having to disassemble much of the right side of the II-A, maybe this is the time to look at other needed repairs. Whereas most Land Rovers have two vents in the scuttle, which can be opened and closed depending on the weather, mine has a third just above the Kodiak heater unit mounted to the bulkhead. This one has grown larger as rust has taken hold of the upper lip facing the engine compartment [Memo to self - that=s why inner fender wells exist. Think about replacing those missing ones.]. It would be a fine time to have a skilled welder work on those panels; replacements ones are being shipped from Rovers North as I write this column. In rural New England, welding shops are as common as tanning salons in the suburbs. Skilled ones are fewer but available so my II-A will be strengthened this coming month.

 

Jim Pappas, the founder of Bay State Rover Owners Association and still a irrepressible Land Rover fan, once claimed that my Land Rover was the only one he knew that could be “detailed with a garage bag.” Of course, he worked as a Sales Guide for a Land Rover Centre [still does, but now in New Jersey] so his vehicles - which once totaled over 8 - were immaculate. Admittedly, mine was not and still is not. Perhaps I should offer it to MTV=s new show APimp My Ride.@ In the opening episode, hosted by rapper Xzibit, they took a $400 Daihatsu Hijet mini-minivan and poured $20,000 of Aimprovements.@  New wheels, tires, paint, wrap-around couch, refrigerator, wide screen DVD and a video camera absorbed the funding. Of course, in the end, you still have only a Daihatsu Hijet, but hey, this is California. I think I=ll leave the II-A Aas is.@ Memo to Jim Pappas: Please send more garbage bags.

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