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- They are the pinnacle of Englishness. They're classless, they're so capable. They've been all around the world. They've got so much history. - They are so rugged, so durable, so versatile. - I think it's iconic in that sense that everybody knows that shape. It is a box on wheels at the end of the day. - The Queen's had a Land Rover. The British Red Cross have had and continue to have Land Rovers. They have been everywhere and done everything.
- The idea that you can get into your Land Rover, yes, you could have go on an expedition around the world. - Whether they're in water, on sand, in snow, on ice. - It was a worldwide four-wheel drive, off-road vehicle, and they were never actually designed to do that. It was totally utilitarian. It was marvelous. - It's a love affair. This a child that you'll have probably for, you know, 30 to 40 years, and you do have to take care of 'em, but it'll always be there for you.
- One of the best things about a Landy is its simplicity. - Anybody can repair, given them enough time and enough spanners. - When Land Rover announced that they were gonna discontinue the classic Defender, I think a lot of people out there just kinda got a little bit sad in that sense. - Once production had stopped, you sort of stop being a consumer because there's nothing to buy anymore, and you start being a keeper and a protector of this, what will forever be historic vehicle, so I think the Land Rover community
definitely got a lot closer. They realized that this is it. - You're only a custodian of the vehicle. You never really own it. You're just keeping it alive for someone else's son or daughter. It's quite fun, really, thinking along those lines. - Whenever I'm going off-roading with other 4x4 owners, they're always a bit amazed that the Land Rover can do all that she can do because she's so original. And I'm like, "Well, yeah. That's a Land Rover for you."
Going somewhere with Land Rover is very much a you're going with it and you need it to be on board to go with you as well. There's a whole ritual to starting her up. So, you go through the paces, and it kind of sort of takes you out of the stresses of whatever's going on into, "Please start. Please start." And it's just peaceful and mind-clearing and a happy place to be sat in that driver's seat. - There's this various interesting quirks about them, but I like that about it because it makes it a very unique car.
So, the Defender had the original air conditioning. It's two vents that you can flip open in the front, which go right through the dashboard through the bulkhead. - It's just an opening to the air, so the air goes straight through this. It's just a door, basically, a door to the outside. - If you're driving through a beautiful country and it's during the spring, you can smell all the flowers. These cars are a much better sense of getting in tune with the nature around you and your drive that you're on.
It brings you much more pleasure than any other vehicle would, I think, out there. - The great thing about traveling in a Land Rover is it's very much not the destination. And I know everyone says, "Oh, it's the journey, not the destination." It literally is in a Land Rover because you might never reach the destination. It's a two-way relationship. If you haven't done the work to get the car in a condition that it will start in the morning, then that's on you. That'd be why she wasn't running and starting so well. Oh, this is a great day. Maybe she'll start first time now. There's a lot more satisfaction because you've got there together and it's very much a team effort.
- I tell people it's grown man LEGOs. It's a car you can totally disassemble and you can completely assemble it again. You can constantly bash into trees, you can flood it out, you can destroy the car, yet the car will keep going, even if you're missing parts or everything's broken on 'em. You know, if a modern day car shock breaks, it's gonna tell you the shock broke or it goes into limp mode. These are very analog. You know, it's not gonna tell you what's wrong with it. You have to kind of understand maybe what to fix with it, but I think people enjoy that.
It's going back to the, you know, analog camera versus a digital camera. - So, people give Land Rovers a hard time because they're always breaking down. Yeah, but, like, get yourself a 40, 50, 60-year-old car that you can use as a daily. - Some of these cars is where it all began, you know, over sort of almost 80 years ago. - How did Land Rover start? So- - The Wilks brothers who invented the Land Rover, they first drew a Land Rover on the sand in a north Welsh beach.
- From that, from literally a doodle in the sand came the Land Rover silhouette. - Here's a car that's been described as Britain's answer to the Jeep. It's called the Land Rover and has been designed to be of the utmost use to farmers in a score of ways. - It was made to be produced very, very quickly and efficiently, not just in components, but in price. - It's expected to cost about 450 pounds and has passed a number of very severe tests. - And in 1948, the first vehicles were taken to the Amsterdam Motor Show.
- By July, when they started production, there was already this euphoria of this multipurpose vehicle that you could go anywhere in and do anything with. And then of course, future iterations, the Series I, the II, the III, the 90, the 110. - Series I was all flat panels. Series II had that little hip, the little shoulder on there, which was, you know, based throughout that. Series II, Series III, well, Series 4 being the Defender, so it all kinda had that. - Nobody set about sort of thinking, "Oh, why don't we keep this vehicle in production and create an icon?" But effectively, that's what they did.
- It was a vehicle that was constantly being made, so we kinda thought, "Are they really gonna discontinue this?" - 2016 goes down as a really important year in Defender. - There's not one reason why Defender, original Defender stopped production. We realized that the whole package that's, you know, the vehicle, the manufacturing, it really needed to move with the times. - It just didn't meet a lot of regulations through EU, Asia, and America, so they kind of had to stop production with that.
- And that's when Land Rover basically stopped making a Defender. - I was pretty devastated in a sense. Land Rover ended up having to stop production with the older vehicle and then go with the new one, which is the new redesigned Defender. - The new Defender is about very, very comfy. Have I said enough about new Defender? Apparently, they're quite good off-road, but nobody wants to get one muddy. You're not gonna put a sheep in one because it'll eat the interior. - Us old Brits stuck in our ways were not exactly joyous at the arrival of it, but now, I think everyone's gotten on board and is a big fan.
I certainly am. It's good, it works. I like it, it's very different. - I don't think it has the ease of maintenance that you would have with the older one, where the new one is built well, but comes with a lot of computers. I know people got gripes with it. It's not the original Defender, but nothing is gonna be the original Defender. People thought it was gonna be gone-gone, but they're still restoring these vehicles. - It's never over with an old Land Rover. That's where Jaguar Land Rover Classic came in. - We take a donor vehicle, we strip it back right to its bare bones.
We take the great parts that can still be used. We refurb other parts. And then we put it onto a new chassis with a new powertrain, a new suspension. - Suddenly, it was an awful lot easier to get parts to the older vehicles. - Land Rover headquarters is amazing. They still make original parts, they still make the original chassis, still make the original axles. So, yeah, happily for us, we can still get all these pieces and parts that we can restore the vehicles with that. - The Land Rovers we got here were rejuvenating, and we're actually so lucky to have got so many old vehicles
before they were actually scrapped to rejuvenate. We've collected all very rare Land Rover bits and bobs. It's very unlikely now that we would take a Land Rover and scrap it. We used to buy Land Rovers for 50 pounds. We used to scrap them. Now, we buy a Land Rover for 3,000 pounds, and we can nearly build just a ghost of the original Land Rover. The Land Rover value has rocketed. - If you wanna sell a Land Rover and it meets the criteria to send it to America, you're gonna make some big cash.
- So, the US market's a little different, I imagine, than the rest of the world. Every Land Rover Defender we restore is brought in. It has to be 25 years old to be imported. We do make them more comfortable than they were originally. We upgrade them with leather and, you know, heated seats, electric windows, electric locks. We modernize them to be more comfortable. All of our fully restored Td5 Defender, the '90s, go for $170,000. I can buy a Jeep Wrangler all day long.
I can buy a Mercedes G Wagon, Ford Bronco all day long, but these are a specialty car, and that vehicle will stay with you. You know, it'll have patina over time. It'll age well. It's like an old Rolex that you want. You'll pass it down to your child hopefully someday. - The scope of the vehicles coming back to life is brilliant. It's perfect 'cause it's another old Land Rover, old Defender back on the road.
- Future of old Land Rovers now is we're going to actually see more restored and more back on the road than we have had for a long time, because there are now more enthusiasts who want to keep these older vehicles going. - You see people proudly driving in with new, old, patinaed, perfect, whatever it might be, but every single person has a unique story, a unique passion, and a unique love for their car because they've been through thick, they've been through thin. - The Land Rover community, I would say, is probably one of the strongest car communities out there because there were so many of them still going.
The aim is that they outlive you. My little Land Rover, she's 40. Classic car. And you're purely looking after it for the next person. - And it's that weds the car together with the person. It's something magical and something very, very unique. I think it's in the name, Defender.
