Ben Fogle - Land Rover - The Story of the Car that Conquered the World

So on the face of it there is not much going for the Defender. It is noisy, uncomfortable, slow, uneconomical and, according to the USA, dangerous. So why is it that I, along with millions of other people around the world, am so hopelessly, obsessively in love with this car?

The Land Rover is an integral part of the fabric of our society, a part of the furniture. Nothing lasts forever, but some things come close. The Defender has survived the decades largely unchanged. It transcends fashion while somehow epitomising it. It has an ability to neutralise rational thought or expectation, and it has avoided the homogenisation of our vehicles in modern times.

The Defender is a beacon of safety and security, too. It is favoured by the military, the police, the fire service, NGOs, the UN, the Royal Palace, the Special Forces and explorers alike. These vehicles have discovered new regions, won wars and saved lives. Across the world, the Land Rover symbolises durability and Britishness, with her diversity and rigidity. It is estimated that three-quarters of all Land Rovers ever built are still rattling noisily across country somewhere in the world.

The Defender is a national treasure. We are reassured by its understated presence. It inspires a second glance but never a stare. Unshowy, unpretentious and classless, it is the car in which you can arrive at Buckingham Palace, a rural farm or an inner-city estate.

Over the years I have encountered Land Rovers in the farthest corners of the world. From steamy tropical jungles to remote islands, I have bounced across lonely landscapes in dozens, perhaps hundreds, of Land Rovers, many of them decades old.

Around the world, the Land Rover has become as much a part of the African savannah as acacia trees and elephants. The UK was still a colonial power at the Defender’s inception, and the car quickly spread across the Empire; from Tristan da Cunha, where a lone policeman patrols the island’s one-mile road in his trusty Defender, one of only a handful of vehicles on the island, to the Falkland Islands, which boast the world’s highest per capita Land Rover ownership – one for each of the 2000 residents who live there, earning itself the moniker Land Rover Island.

I have driven through the muddy trails of the Amazon basin and across the deserts of Chile in ancient Land Rovers bound together with baler twine. When my young family first came to visit me while I was working in Africa, there was never any question that we would embark on an expedition across the muddy plains of the Serengeti in anything other than a Defender. It always seems incredible that these international workhorses that have crossed some of the most challenging of landscapes in remote corners of the world originated from a former sewing-machine factory in Solihull, near Birmingham. Such an inauspicious birthplace for arguably one of the world’s most iconic vehicles.

When I drive through London in my Land Rover I get stopped not for my autograph or a selfie but for a photograph of my car. I have lost count of the number of notes slipped under the windscreen wiper with offers to buy my beloved car. The children love it. The dogs love it – and so do two million other people in the world.

Everyone from Fidel Castro to the Queen drives a Land Rover Defender. Idris Elba made his entrance at the 2014 Invictus Games’ opening ceremony aboard a trusty Defender. Ralph Lauren, Kevin Costner and Sylvester Stallone all drive the rugged vehicles. And now, after 67 years and two million vehicles, the Land Rover Defender has ceased production. It is ironic that the vehicle is more popular in death than it was in life. Interest has reached fever pitch for this icon of Britishness; it is a vehicle that transcended its original remit to knit itself into the fabric of the nation that created it.

A vehicle that can drag a plough, clear a minefield and carry royalty, the Land Rover Defender transcends the rapidly changing world in which we live. As cars become rounder, curvier and shinier, the Land Rover Defender still looks like a child’s drawing of a car, with its boxy shape. To climb into a Defender is like stepping back in time into a simpler, classier world.

The Defender was a car that didn’t just defy the fickle face of fashion but also changing mechanisation and economics. It was a car that was handbuilt until the end. It took 56 man hours to construct just one vehicle. Two original parts have been fitted to all soft-top Series Land Rovers and Defenders since 1948: the hood cleats and the underbody support strut – but these are just two of the over 7000 individual parts that make up each Defender.

This is a car that is instantly recognisable from its wing mirrors to its wings. Indeed, workers on the Land Rover production line have their own nicknames for parts of the vehicle: for example, the door hinges are known as ‘pigs ears’ and the dashboard is the ‘lamb’s chops’.

So what is it about this vehicle that has spawned such an obsessive, loyal following? How did the Land Rover so successfully take over the world? In some ways the Defender mirrors many of our national traits; stiff-upper-lipped and slightly eccentric. In the spirit of the great British explorers Scott, Shackleton, Cook, Livingstone, Fawcett and Fiennes, the Land Rover was a twentieth-century progression of the age of exploration.

The car has spawned an industry that includes dozens of publications, car shows and even model cars tailored to the passion of those who dedicate their lives to the Land Rover. In order to understand why this car is such a national treasure and excites such passion, I decided to embark on a road trip of my own in my trusty Land Rover to meet the people who live for this marque – the enthusiasts, the designers, the military, the police and the explorers who glory in this bastion of quintessential Britishness.

A Land Rover is a living breathing thing. The vehicles become characters. We name them. We learn their unique quirks and foibles. It is a sort of love affair. I know plenty of men who remember more about their old beloved Land Rovers than they do their ex-girlfriends. These cars seduce us with their charm – they are not supermodels, they are dependable, robust and loyal. There is a unique and almost unquantifiable relationship with a Land Rover. It is an emotional attachment like no other. How can a man-made object have such power over us?

Every Land Rover has its own unique story to tell. Here, in these pages, is the story of the world’s favourite car and how it conquered the planet and the hearts and souls of those who inhabit it … and me.

CHAPTER ONE

You never forget your first Land Rover. It was a rusty grey pick up that seemed to be held together with baler twine. The doors didn’t close properly and baler twine was doing the job of holding them shut. Inside, her seats were ragged and torn, transformed into a fabric reminiscent of Emmental cheese by the farm rats. The front windscreen was cracked and there was a large hole where a stereo had once sat. A thin coat of dust coated the interior and an even thicker layer of mud swamped the footwells. Various gloves and farm tools had been wedged into any spare space. She had a sort of musty, fuely smell that overwhelmed the senses.

On starting, she would rattle and vibrate violently. A thick black cloud of smoke would temporarily envelop the whole car with a toxic cloud of diesel fumes that threatened to choke you as it seeped through the gaping seals where the doors failed to close.

I must have been about 9 or 10 years old; I was on a farm in West Sussex where my parents had rented a tiny cottage, which was next to a working beef and dairy farm that the farmer operated with the help of an ancient Land Rover. I loved that smelly old broken vehicle, built purely for functionality.