Читать книгу Land Rover: The Story of the Car that Conquered the World - Ben Fogle, Ben Fogle - Страница 12

HOW LAND ROVER BECAME THE MODERN EXPLORERS

Britain has a long heritage of exploration and adventure; Captain Cook, Captain Scott, Ernest Shackleton, Livingstone, Raleigh, Drake … the list is endless. In many ways, the Land Rover became the mechanical evolution of the great heroic era of exploration. It provided access to places that had once been inaccessible. It allowed modern-day explorers to push geographic boundaries and penetrate deep into some of the Earth’s greatest and hitherto unexplored wildernesses.

British, strong, lantern-jawed, rugged, reliable and determined, the qualities of the Land Rover were not lost on professional explorers. Where once the adventurer had relied on packhorses and mules to carry their loads, this vehicle stepped in as their new mechanical workhorse. A Land Rover could go anywhere that a horse had gone, without fear of fatigue. It could carry heavier loads, too.

One of the first explorers to use the Land Rover was Colonel Leblanc, who drove from Britain to Ethiopia in 1949. The Rover company were impressed at his audacity, and soon he became a travelling salesman for the company. In this role Leblanc helped to sell new models of Land Rovers and Rover cars by leading them in small convoys into faraway remote regions, demonstrating their endurance abilities to the watching world.

However it was Laurens Van der Post who helped to establish the Land Rover as the perfect expedition vehicle. Van der Post was commissioned by the BBC to make a six-part documentary in search of the Bushmen in the Kalahari. The Lost World of the Kalahari was a huge hit and Land Rover suddenly realised the power of the brand in helping and endorsing overland expeditions around the world. The vehicles acted like mobile advertising billboards.

One of the most celebrated Land Rover adventurers was an adventuress named Barbara Toy. In 1955, the Australian adventuress drove an 80-inch Land Rover called Pollyanna around the globe. Her book, Pollyanna, documenting the journey became a bestseller, further cementing the Land Rover as the explorer’s car.

But it is the 1955–6 Far East expedition undertaken by Oxford and Cambridge Universities that caused Land Rover to become the iconic symbol of discovery and adventure. The expedition was on an unprecedented scale and had numerous sponsors, including the Royal Geographic Society. It involved an overland journey across Europe and Asia from London to Singapore. It was the first time such an expedition had been attempted. Two 86-inch Series I station wagons had been loaned to a team of students from Oxford and Cambridge Universities. The Land Rovers were painted in the light and dark blues of the respective universities.

It was a gruelling journey that included the daunting prospect of the dense impenetrable jungles of Southeast Asia. The former commissioner of the BBC, a then unknown David Attenborough, commissioned a film about the expedition.

The film included the crossing of the virgin desert between Damascus and Baghdad and the traverse of the Ledo Road between India and Burma that was later closed. The vehicles forded rivers and streams and often had to build their own bridges to cross the deeper bodies of water. They drove the narrow, dizzying roads of Nepal and risked both bandits and headhunters in their quest to drive to Singapore. The team were forced to hack new paths through northern Thailand’s virgin forest.

The vehicles provided Land Rover with invaluable data on their tolerance and resilience in tough conditions, but above all, the iconic images and the later film provided advertising that money couldn’t buy of the Land Rover as the go-anywhere vehicle.

The Oxford and Cambridge Expedition arrived in Singapore on 6 March 1956, six months after leaving Hyde Park the previous year. It was a huge success. The vehicles had negotiated 18,000 miles of roads, tracks and jungle. One of the Land Rovers is still on display at the Heritage Centre in Gaydon today.

The success of the expedition was soon followed by a second Oxford and Cambridge overland journey across South America in search of the geographical centre of Brazil.

Not to be outdone by the educated elite, working-class Londoner Eric Edis set out in 1957 to circumnavigate the entire world in a Land Rover. Without sponsorship, he led a team of sixteen in three Land Rovers on a two-year journey. Only one of the Land Rovers survived the gruelling expedition, but once again the Land Rover had proved its credentials while also acting as a mobile billboard, reaching people and places other brands could only dream of achieving.

One of my favourite expeditions, visually, was the Joint Services Expedition in which four Forward Control 101s crossed northern Africa and the Sahara Desert – travelling 7500 miles from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea. They completed the gruelling journey in 100 days, and it was the superb performance of the vehicles on this expedition that led to the Land Rover being taken up by the British military.

These were the days of the great explorers – adventurers who pushed not just geographical boundaries, but took on what to others may have seemed eccentric and even impossible. When I was 14 I met one such man, a character who arguably changed the course of my life.

I was at boarding school in Dorset and one Saturday morning we were entertained by an explorer who looked like a throwback to the Victorian era. He was clad in safari jacket, pith helmet and jungle boots, and he completed his look with a python draped around his neck.

Colonel Blashford Snell, better known as Blashers, had come to our school to talk about his various expeditions around the world. He was notorious for having crossed the Gobi Desert, been shot at in Libya, carried a grand piano into the Amazon, and taken part in searches for the elusive yeti and the fabled two-snouted dog of Bolivia. He was a man of eccentricity and I was immediately drawn to him by his charm and charisma.

It would be a further 20 years until I finally got to meet my hero again, at a reception with Her Majesty at Buckingham Palace – but that sounds like bragging, so I shall move on. Of all the expeditions around the world, Blashers is arguably most famous for taking a Land Rover where this vehicle had never been before. For a car that had transformed the world with its ‘go everywhere and anywhere’ accessibility, this was really saying something. Of course, this book would not be complete without the story of Blashers’ legendary expedition, so I just had to go and visit him and hear the story in his own words.

I have always loved Dorset. It is probably because it holds so many childhood memories. This was the county of my formative years and it still has a soothing, calming effect on me. Once again I found myself rumbling through the tall hedgerows that tower over the narrow snaking country lanes.

This is Land Rover country. I must have passed twenty Defenders as I made my way up the A31 from Poole to Blandford Forum. I was on my way to the Colonel’s house but along the way I was making a detour to visit Rosie, a Land Rover enthusiast I had come across on social media. We had arranged to meet at her house deep in the Dorset countryside to talk all things Land Rover, and particularly the part that this marque plays in her life.

Rosie and her partner Jon are obsessed with coffee. They were fed up with the rise of the high-street coffee chains and they wanted to return to the art of artisanal coffee making – to put the love back into coffee without the capitalist approach. They couldn’t afford a shop and, besides, they liked the idea of providing coffee to consumers who cared about their produce, so they planned to serve it at farmers’ markets and food festivals. What they needed, though, was a mobile coffee wagon.

Jon suggested a Land Rover, so they began their search for a suitable vehicle to transform into a mobile barista. They soon found a Series III on Gumtree for £2000. They put in an offer and a few days later the owner arrived with his entire family and the Land Rover on a trailer.

‘They were all crying their eyes out,’ marvels Rosie. ‘It was like a bereavement for them to say goodbye to the car. It had been lovingly fitted with bench seats and you could tell this had been a much-loved family car. We didn’t have the heart to tell them what we planned to do with it,’ she added, sounding embarrassed.

Rosie and Jon had named their coffee company Grounded – a combination of ground coffee and the fact that a Land Rover is rooted to the ground as a 4×4.

I stood at the little counter under the weak spring sunshine while Rosie worked the Italian machine. They had converted the Land Rover themselves and you could see the passion and love that had gone into this project. As I sipped on my cappuccino, Rosie proudly showed me the scrapbook full of photographs from the beginning of the restoration project.

‘Jon will be gutted not to be here,’ she admitted. He still had to work shifts in the pub, but according to Rosie it was he who was the Land Rover fanatic.

At markets and shows, the car, named Arthur, is always swamped with people wanting to take a photo of it. ‘It makes people smile,’ she laughs.

I asked Rosie what it’s like to drive her.

‘Well, she leaks, she’s slow and she’s really really cold,’ she admits. ‘But I love her.’

Rosie knew nothing about Land Rovers before they bought Arthur (although Jon was a self-confessed enthusiast), and by her own admission her family think she and Jon are crazy, but with this vehicle they have managed to combine their two passions: coffee and Land Rovers. And you can’t argue with that.

With my Land Rover-made coffee injecting a much-needed caffeine boost around my body, I said goodbye to Rosie and Arthur the Land Rover and continued on my way to find Blashers.

If you were to imagine what a Victorian explorer’s house looked like, the Colonel’s house was probably it, brimming with treasures, guns, art, textiles, bows and arrows and other stuff from his various global expeditions. In the hall was a huge Vickers machine gun that he had bought from a ‘local choir boy who is also an arms dealer’. The man himself chuckled, ‘everyone marvels at the gun but no one ever asks if it’s legal.’

The room was filled with photographs and paintings from around the world. There were muskets and guns mounted on the walls and all sorts of indigenous and tribal objects hanging from every nook and cranny.

‘It’s a museum of exploration,’ he explained.

We moved on to his expedition stores. The entrance contained a carefully indexed library of thousands of travel, adventure and exploration books, all catalogued by country. Next was the film room, bursting at the seams with VHS tapes, DVDs and hundreds of cylinders of old cinematic film which Blashers was in the process of transferring into digital format. One wall was dedicated to a series of little doors labelled: HOT ARID DRY, HOT TROPICAL WET, COLD DRY, COLD DAMP, and so on. I pulled one door open to find a cupboard brimming with khaki shirts and jackets. There were dozens of hats and pith helmets. It was like a props cupboard, except this had all been worn in anger.

Another wall was piled high with boxes full of rations, tents, canteens, plates, cutlery, lamps, stoves and torches. This was the room of a travelling hoarder. My eyes were overwhelmed. Bows and arrows and spears were propped up in every corner. Each one of them had a story. ‘This one nearly killed me,’ Blasher told me, holding up a knife. It was a living museum of Blashers’ extraordinary life.

We headed outside to an outbuilding – ‘expedition base,’ he explained. When I visited him he had only recently returned from a recce to Colombia and was soon to lead an expedition across Mongolia. Pretty impressive for an almost 80-year-old.

‘So how important have Land Rovers been in your life?’ I asked him.

‘Vital,’ Blashers answered. ‘I have driven them in Ethiopia and used them to clear mines in Libya, I have been shot at in Omagh in Northern Ireland and in Cyprus and used them to support expeditions to explore the Blue Nile.’

Land Rovers really have loomed large in Blashers’ life and they have saved his life on more than one occasion, too. As a sapper in the army, the Land Rover was a vital piece of kit. The cars provided access to the inaccessible. They were packhorses that never tired. ‘I remember the Land Rovers we used to drive had a big sign on the inside of the windscreen which read, “This vehicle cost £1400, please look after it.”’

He told me the story of one Land Rover that overheated as they drove through the desert. The open-topped Rover had become red hot, igniting a polyester sleeping bag stowed in a cage at the back. ‘We had to jettison all the spare fuel to save the vehicle from igniting,’ he smiled at the memory.

Blashers is also credited with setting up Operation Raleigh in 1984, which today still enables volunteers to travel to remote places around the world and help local communities. When Prince Charles was given a 110 by Land Rover, he kindly handed it on to Blashers as a donation to Operation Raleigh, for which he was patron.

The walls of Blashers’ home are papered with mosaics of expedition images, and among the hundreds of heroic shots are the unmistakable shapes of Land Rover Series vehicles. ‘The Queen particularly liked the photograph from the Darien Gap,’ he smiled proudly. ‘We were invited to Buckingham Palace after we made it through the Gap; the Queen told me she particularly admired the photograph of the Series II Land Rover flying the Union flag.’ He showed me a photograph of the vehicle afloat on a river. It’s a great image that sums up the derring-do of the go-anywhere do-anything Land Rover.

Which leads us on to perhaps Bashers’ most famous expedition: the Darien Gap.

The Pan American highway had transformed trade and travel between North, Central and South America. The highway ran seamlessly until it reached Panama, where it came to an abrupt halt at a notorious jungle crossing known as the Darien Gap. This hostile, steamy jungle had defeated engineers, who were unable to find a way through the impenetrable swamp between Panama and Colombia.

In the late 1950s, several expeditions were mounted by international teams in an attempt to cross the gap, and in 1971 Blashers seized the opportunity. He asked his engineering chief if he thought it was a good idea for him to go. For the army, these were the twilight years between conflicts, and the military were looking for opportunities for adventurous training. The Darien Gap project would be a perfect combination of technical problem-solving, engineering, mechanics and jungle training.

Blashers sent an Irishman on a recce of the jungle, during which he nearly died, but he reported back to the Colonel that, with enough time, men and resources, the crossing would be possible. So the Royal Engineers were enlisted, along with a small army of scientists, zoologists, botanists, geologists and anthropologists. Now all they needed was a vehicle.

By now Land Rover had built their luxury car, the Range Rover, which they were preparing to launch onto the market. They saw the Darien Gap project as the perfect platform for doing just that, and to prove its off-roading credentials at the same time. It was a brave marketing move – and certainly a gamble.

Two brand-new Range Rovers were supplied by Land Rover, and were carefully driven from Alaska to Panama, where the jungle expedition would begin. The team had 100 days to cover 250 miles of virgin jungle.

‘The problem was the Range Rovers had very powerful engines,’ explained Blashers, ‘but the ground was unseasonably wet, turning it into a muddy quagmire, so the torque of the engines ground the wheels into the mud where they stuck.’ After that, the differentials on the Range Rovers exploded – 12 of them – before Land Rover began to panic and sent out their own engineers.

Meanwhile, it became apparent to Blashers that what they needed was a Land Rover; not a poncy Range Rover, but a lightweight Series Land Rover to help clear the way ahead of the two heavier vehicles. A runner was dispatched back to Panama City where they purchased on old Series II for $100, which was duly delivered by helicopter to the middle of the Darien Gap to join the expedition. It was named the Pathfinder – and without the electrics of the Range Rovers and with its lightweight body, it performed effortlessly.

However, Blashers needed more men. ‘I hired 100 murderers and rapists from the local prison in El Real,’ he explained matter-of-factly. ‘I swapped them for a case of Scotch whisky and the promise that I would release them in Colombia.’

The press had found the idea of the expedition intoxicating – it was a tale that combined old-school exploration with modern motor vehicles. The Daily Telegraph had dispatched their own reporter to cover the expedition, and he confided in Blashers that he wasn’t sure if he was covering an expedition or a disaster.

Eventually the team made it through – but not without losses. Dozens of men died during the expedition, but the biggest casualty came when a group of soldiers was ambushed while attempting to join them from the Colombian side. A dozen were shot and killed by warring locals. This was a hostile country at a hostile time.

The surviving explorers were much feted at a celebratory march in Medellín, in Colombia, where they laid a wreath at the statue of the city’s liberator, Simón Bolívar. The expedition was deemed a success and Land Rover had saved face. The Range Rovers returned to the UK where Blashers was asked to drive them around the country as a form of marketing for Land Rover – the Series II Pathfinder, however, was sold in Colombia.

‘They offered to sell the Range Rovers to me at a discount,’ recalls Blashers. ‘But I couldn’t afford the fuel, so I got a Volvo instead.’

The Land Rover had cemented itself as the car that could go anywhere. It had become an indispensable necessity for modern-day explorers, and the images of these cars ploughing their way through these gruelling expeditions captured the nation’s imagination. The vehicle’s ability to traverse the world’s most inhospitable landscapes also helped secure it one of the most incredible statistics: it has been said that for more than half the world’s population, the Land Rover was the very first vehicle they ever saw.

However, with the hallowed days of the great explorations now becoming history, and with explorations becoming fewer and fewer, Land Rover sought other forums in which to test the versatility and endurance abilities of their cars. The Land Rover was about to make its metamorphosis from simple workhorse to high-tech rally car. The world of competitive endurance rally racing was really taking off, and it was only a matter of time before the Land Rover came of age.

In 1970, Derbyshireman Drew Bowler decided he wanted to have a go at rally driving. He didn’t have any money to buy a car so he looked around the farm and found an old Series I Land Rover. He fitted it with roll bars and a new engine and thus was born the Land Rover Bowler.

As rallying really started to take off in the UK throughout the 1970s and 80s, Drew became more and more shrewd when it came to his interpretation of the rules. While most drivers were competing in ‘off the line’ vehicles, Bowler was busy adapting and transforming existing vehicles into something unique. Thus he was arguably one of the pioneers in the Land Rover modification cottage industry that had cropped up around the country. Most significant in his designs was the fact that Drew realised he didn’t have to use the Land Rover chassis; by changing it he could alter a farm vehicle into something capable of taking on the Paris Dakar Rally.

The Tom Cat was the first Bowler production Land Rover, but it was soon followed by the Wild Cat. Both vehicles bear a striking similarity to the Land Rover Defender and Series, but radical plastic surgery had been done to her body, as well as an overhaul of her internal organs.

The world of Rally Racing exploded. The Paris Dakar was seen as the pinnacle of this circuit, the race making plenty of headlines around the world with its tales of derring-do as modern-day adventurers took to Mad Max vehicles to race across the deserts of West Africa.

Current price tags for an individual to take part in a fully supported race car run upwards of a million dollars, and while there are still plenty of wealthy hedge fund managers willing to part with that kind of cash, Drew realised there was a market for those enthusiasts who sat somewhere in between. At the lowest end, in particular, were the maverick home engineers who built cars in their spare time in their garages, and Drew saw this as an untapped market of people keen to enter the world of endurance rally racing.

The Rally Raid, a series of 600-mile-plus endurance races across Europe, was the perfect fit for his Land Rover and these wannabe racers. Cars needed to be equipped to travel distances of up to 375 miles unassisted, which entailed carrying massive 88-gallon fuel tanks weighing upwards of half a ton. This necessitated stronger suspension, which in turn required a stronger chassis.

The Wild Cat was essentially a Land Rover on steroids – 40 per cent Defender, the rest handmade. Drew created the greatest rally car on the market.

While other marques had official rally car divisions racing under their brand, Land Rover never had such a dedicated department. Instead, under an informal agreement, Bowler become the official Land Rover rally car and the development of the Bowler came about with full design assistance of Land Rover.

Drew Bowler had tapped into a market where enthusiasts would be prepared to spend £100,000 on a race-ready rally car, and he soon had upwards of a dozen competing in the famous Dakar Rally. However, Bowler’s market was restricted to the UK. ‘Elsewhere in Europe and beyond, the Land Rover was seen as a premium vehicle not an off-road vehicle,’ admits Drew.

The early 1990s were not Land Rover’s finest years, and were memorable only for the production of the much-derided Freelander 1. Added to this was Land Rover’s aggressive pursuit of the luxury market with their Range Rover. Beyond British borders, it seemed, the Land Rover had lost its way, but Bowler had given them a platform to remind people of their cars’ serious off-road capabilities, even if it meant a car that had been assembled from only half a Defender.

The relationship with Land Rover remains strong, as Drew pointed out to me when I visited him at his workshops in Derbyshire.

‘We were one of the first businesses to be recognised, supported and endorsed by Land Rover,’ Drew admits proudly. As if to reiterate this, he took me to a ‘secret room’ where a team of designers worked at banks of computers with high-speed CAD (Computer Aided Design) links to Land Rover’s headquarters.

Rally cars required a number of modifications from a standard off-road vehicle. As we walked around the factory floor Drew showed me bumpers that had holes cut out to save weight, but also for ease of cleaning after a race. ‘A rally car picks up 40–60 pounds of mud during a race,’ he explained. ‘They need to be easily hosed down, and the holes help.’

Perhaps most astonishing to see were the massive support trucks that accompany the rally vehicles around the world. Standing some 20 feet tall and weighing in at a staggering 27 tons, I was dwarfed by one six-wheeler truck. Essentially mobile workshops, they also need to be able to navigate across the course. ‘There was a point when they were faster than some of the cars,’ Drew laughed. They too are fitted with full roll cages and rally seats. Nothing has been omitted in the detailed design of these cars, with upwards of one a week being made by a team of 27 staff. Not to be outdone, though, next to the Goliath was a similar-sized Czech vehicle that had once been used as a mobile nuclear missile launcher.

As the popularity of rally driving continued to grow, Drew spotted another hole in the market: those who wanted a road-legal Defender in which they could weekend rally. Thus the Defender Challenge Land Rover was born – a short wheelbase Defender modified into a highly able rally vehicle. The interior was stripped out and roll bars and rally seats were fitted, along with all the other safety requirements. The result was a car that was original Defender on the outside, but something far more sporty inside.

As far as cost goes, a mere £50,000 buys you the car, a further £20,000 will ensure its entry into the six-part Defender Challenge series, and Bowler will even maintain and manage the cars for you. Like stabling of the finest racehorses, the company will deliver the Bowler Defenders to the rally course then take them away at the end and clean and make any necessary adjustments afterwards. The owners just need to turn up, race and go home.

I asked Drew what made Derbyshire such a good place for his manufacturing.

‘Rural communities have the ability to fix things,’ he explained. ‘We have some of the greatest engineers and manufacturers. Locally we have Rolls-Royce, Bombardier and Toyota.’ If you want something made, come to Derbyshire.

Intrigued to know why he had continued with Land Rovers, I asked him why he still worked with this marque.

‘They’re like a fungus that you can’t get rid of,’ he replied. ‘I learnt to drive in a Series I and it was the same car I started rallying in. Today people want the nostalgia of the cars from their past or their childhood; we revert back to what we know, there is reassurance in something we remember. We have every customer from billionaires to builders; they are all drawn to the classless car.’

In the corner of the workshop stood another Series I that looked unlike anything I had ever seen before.

‘This one has been totally rebuilt for a customer in the Middle East. It has power steering, air conditioning, V8 engine, proper brakes,’ Drew explained.

It was a stunning-looking vehicle, and I wondered if perhaps this was the next period of evolution in the cottage industry of Land Rovers.

‘There was near panic and hysteria last year,’ admitted Drew. ‘People heard that production of the Defender was about to stop and there was a mad scramble to get a car.

‘There are two types of Land Rover enthusiasts,’ he continued, ‘those who wanted to get one as an investment and those who had always wanted a Land Rover and thought they’d get one before it was too late.’

Bowler has a loyal customer base.

‘Our customers often have a top-of-the-range Range Rover, and a Defender, and they complete the set with a Bowler rally car,’ Drew revealed.

I wondered whether wives ever have much input. Drew rolled his eyes and smiled.

‘“It’s an investment, darling,” is the most common excuse for buying a Bowler Land Rover. We always have to handle the wives,’ he admitted. ‘The second most common reply from a prospective customer about to sign for a car is, “I’ll just check with my wife.”’

The worst, though, Drew revealed, is the customer who arrives with his ‘enthusiastic mate’ who is invariably a hobby mechanic. The ‘friend’ will moan and complain about the engineering and mechanics and quite literally talk his friend out of the business.

‘The Land Rover is an assuring vehicle,’ Drew said. ‘We see them used by search and rescue, the police, the coastguard, ambulance service and the military, and we think, if it’s good enough for them, it’s good enough for me.’

Rally cars aside, Land Rovers had so far proved to be the ultimate vehicles for the adventurous for more than two decades. Yet the most adventurous event of all was about to hit the scene. The ‘Olympics of 4×4’, as it was dubbed, began in 1980 with the Camel Trophy. These new adventure races started with a course that took drivers along the Trans-Amazonian highway in Series II Land Rovers. The events were all about adventure and expedition, and in the early years they took place in Sumatra, Papua New Guinea, Zaire, Brazil, Borneo, Australia, Madagascar (the first north–south crossing) and Sulawesi, before returning to the Amazon.

These gruelling tests of human endurance brought together teams from around the world who hoped to triumph in some of the most treacherous off-road conditions imaginable. Teamwork and camaraderie were crucial. The competitive element came in a series of ‘Special Tasks’ – such as winching and timed driving routes – in which the national teams competed against each other.

Between 1981 and 1998, Land Rover was the primary sponsor of the Camel Trophy adventure competition. In each of those seventeen years the company provided a fleet of vehicles for the international teams to use; however, the only event that featured Series IIIs as team vehicles was the one that took place in 1983. That year the Camel Trophy was held in Zaire and featured crew from several countries. The 1000-mile journey crossed terrain ranging from knee-deep mud to desert sand, but the biggest obstacle was the heat – 45 degrees centigrade in the shade, with humidity at 95 per cent.

In the 1990s, the Camel Trophy headed to Siberia and the USSR, followed by Tanzania, Burundi, Guyana, Argentina, Paraguay, Chile (the ‘Road to Hell’ event), Belize, Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras (controversially serving 500 out-of-season lobsters at a dinner), Kalimantan (1000 miles and 18 rollovers to celebrate the first crossing of the island 100 years previously) and Mongolia.

The Camel Trophy, however, did not simply change venue; over the years the event evolved from a mud-plugging expedition to include elements of adventure sport, such as kayaking, mountain biking and winter sports. Teams were selected by each competing nation in competitions held nationally, designed to test the athletic, engineering and driving prowess of potential candidates.

Changing environmental sentiments and respect for the Earth began to impact the race as people questioned the damage that the cars caused to the natural landscapes they traversed. So by 1993 the race included green tasks such as building an environmental monitoring station in the jungle so that biologists could accurately study the flora and fauna of an area that had barely been explored previously. In all the events, the convoy’s progress reopened roads and tracks that had fallen into disuse and frequently rebuilt bridges and repaired sections of damaged tracks.

In 1998 the Camel Trophy returned to Argentina and Chile for the penultimate Tierra del Fuego event. It was here that the Land Rover Freelander made its debut, when it was used to speed the competitors 6000 miles across the remote and snowy terrain. Outdoor pursuits dominated that event, and shortly afterwards Land Rover, still a major sponsor, felt that the Camel Trophy was moving away from adventure and exploration and issued a press release that indicated they would not sponsor future events. This ultimately led to the cancellation of the 1999 event, which was planned for Peru.

What we have left now are memories of the competition’s glory years of the 1980s and 90s, when the Camel Trophy’s distinctive yellow-orange Land Rovers travelled to diverse places across the globe.

That was not quite the end, though, as Land Rover’s role as the mainstay of tough off-road adventure was briefly reprised in 2003 with the Land Rover G4 Challenge. This hugely expensive event was staged by Land Rover itself, and although slicing through jungles was out of the question, special off-road stages were held to test the capability of the vehicles as well as the skills of the drivers, using Defenders, Discoverys, Freelanders and Range Rovers.

The obligatory gruelling aspect of this event came from physical challenges such as kayaking, orienteering, mountain biking and abseiling. The first competition was won by Belgian fighter pilot Rudi Theoken, who turned down the first prize of a brand-new Range Rover and requested two Defenders instead!

Following the first G4 Challenge, in 2003, G4-Edition Defenders became available for the general public to buy. As well as the distinctive Tangiers Orange livery of the competition vehicles, yellow and black versions were also produced. Defender 90 and 110 versions were available, with front A-bar, roll cage, side steps and front spotlights as standard, as well as G4 badging.

Another G4 Challenge followed in 2006 and a third was scheduled for 2009, but the costly event was scrapped in 2008 by new owners Tata, who decided the return wasn’t worth the outlay, and instead diverted funds into creating new models and the frenetic launch activity for them that we have witnessed in recent years.

These days the world is a smaller place and there aren’t so many unexplored corners left to encourage budding explorers to jump into a Land Rover and get out there. But there are still plenty of adventures to be found for the thoughtful Land Rover owner. In the UK, there are Land Rover clubs up and down the land which meet most weekends and together drive the nation’s green lanes – byways that have vehicular rights and can be legally driven. For the more adventurous, though, there are companies that lead expeditions to all corners of Europe and North Africa, which you can join in your Land Rover. Morocco and the Sahara Desert are particularly popular destinations, following an overland drive through France and Spain, before catching a ferry across the Strait of Gibraltar.

Although the days of the big set-piece events are over for Land Rover, their role as expedition vehicles continues in occasional challenges. Most recently, Land Rover sponsored the Pole of Cold, a 7500-mile journey from the UK to Oymyakon in the Sakha Republic of Russia which chased winter across Europe and Siberia in a red, specially modified Land Rover Defender. The expedition enabled geographic researchers to reach the coldest place in the Northern Hemisphere, Oymyakon, in northeastern Russia, which has recorded temperatures as low as minus 67 degrees centigrade.

For this journey the Defender was equipped with a Webasto engine heater and extra insulation around the engine bay and suspension. An additional layer of glass was fitted to the windows to create an insulating double-glazed effect and enabled the team to see through side windows whatever the conditions. In three months the Defender covered 18,750 miles. Over the next four months the team drove the length of Norway and Finland, crossing the Arctic Circle twice, before driving the breadth of Eurasia, returning via Altai, Tuva, Sweden and Denmark – all in the depths of winter. In all, the team drove some 22,500 miles and experienced temperatures as low as minus 58.9 degrees centigrade. During the expedition the team spent time with a variety of people recording wide-ranging perspectives on winter, from fishermen in Norway to aurora scientists in Finland, Shaman in Tuva and reindeer nomads in Yakutia.