The Off-Roader: Workhorse Turned Status Symbol

I have a bad feeling about these big off-roaders. - Jades. - I really don't like them. You don't need a Volvo X-F9. You can have a Volvo X-F60, but people go for the 90s just because it's. Is that going up to 11 in spinal taps? Do you not know what I mean? It's like. But I wonder how the troops felt, you know, the Tommy's when, sort of, Lord Rose would be turned up in his Rolls-Royce phantom. - He's learned to hand. - And they've been in some rat-infested trench. The idea that the sexier, the slicker you are, as a car brand, the cooler you are, is kind of out the window these days. You could use them in other forward or reverse. So you could travel backwards at 60 miles an hour. Yeah, she's quite frightening. Welcome to the luxury dispatch. The podcaster reveals the refined and the rare. The stories, people and items that make up the luxury industry. I'm Tom Chamberlain, and today, our topic is the history of the off-roader, from functional vehicle to a fast, fashionable, urban, wealth indicator, will be unpicking this evolution and try to figure out what has made the format so desirable. Who better to be joined by today than my good friend, journalist, author, and classic car expert Simon DeBurton? Simon, love you to see you. Tom, hello. Thank you for having me. Simon, one thing I've always known, right, is because you live in Dartmore. So I've always imagined you sort of emerging out from the mist of the Grimpin Maya of Dartmore in the sort of Arthur Conan Doyle Way on your motorbike. But you seem sort of the kind of ultimate off-roader man, I would say, of anyone I know, at least anyway. And so the off-roader is really embedded in your sort of soul. It's a you, I mean, you have plenty, you know them very well. Tell me about your relationship with the off-roader. Well, my relationship with the modern off-roader is not terribly good because, as you say, living on Dartmore, as we call it, people tend to come down there in these modern rain trovers and they're quite enormous, you know, and they don't want to scrape them down the sides of the hedges, which the roads are just too narrow for these big cars. Yes. And they've got every possible convenience inside. They've got reversing cameras. They've got those things that peep the whole time. They've got things that stop the car if you, there's any danger of hitting something. Yeah. But they never use them. These people, they'll never, ever use them. They always expect you to back up if they've got 20 feet into a little passing place. They've refused. They refuse. 99% of the time they refuse. So you have to reverse in your terrible Orlando. You can't see out the back of. Yeah. It's got no power steering. It's covered in dense and things because you've hit rocks so many times. So that has given me a very sort of, I have a bad feeling about these, these big off-roaders. Taders. I really don't like them. I think they're, it's an exaggeration I suppose, but they're sort of symbolic of all the things that have gone wrong with the human race, I think. I mean, people that have the big. Don't go and get off the fence, Simon. I mean, people that have them, they always say, it's so wonderful because I'm so safe. I mean, that's the way of saying, I can hit someone else. Simon right, Jack. I'll be fine. And oh, you've got such wonderful visibility. In other words, you don't really have to care about looking around because if you happen to be in a slight bit of difficulty, you'll be able to spot it because some poor solid in a a Mazda MX 5 or something is just about sort of go under your front wheel. And merge out the other side perfectly fine. Exactly. Yeah. And you once wrote an article for me for the rake that discussed the idea of the rot setting in. And for that, you went all the way back to the Second World War and the river, the Willie's Jeep. But let's go even further back and just talk about the genesis of the off-roader. And this is pre-land Rover, pre-Willis Jeep. This is a world where autumn Abills, however they were made, people would use them for off-roading reasons. So why don't we talk about those and devil it turn into the world of autumn Abills and the kind of eccentric things that people got up to? Well, cars were about wealth when they knew they were. Yeah, it was ever thus against a large extent. And the idea now that you have to have this fabulous vehicle that really is incredibly capable off-road if you want to take it there. Seems odd when you think in the early 20th century when cars were becoming popular, they were a symbol of adventure. But there weren't that many roads. But people still wanted to take them places and experiment to see how far they could get. And I suppose the best example of that is in 1907, the original Peaking to Paris race. Yeah. And it was advertised in the more newspaper and entries were invited. And I think they got 30 or 40 entrants. In the end, only five people went through with them. And they had the cars taken out to Peaking. Yeah. But very nice. It's 9,000 miles from Peaking to Paris. It's a long way. I mean, it's an end of a drive. Not many people in China had cars. And nobody had ways to show them the cars to get around. Most of the people between Paris and they probably never seen a car. No, yeah. And anyway, they went out there, these five people. Anyway, who established that there was a sort of a possible route? I don't. Well, the route was impossible. That was the only thing about it. Okay, fine. And there were pictures of these. They made the route along the telegraph route. Purely because it was a literative, Peaking to Paris. Yeah. So maybe, I don't know. But the route was along the lines of where telegraphs could be sent. Okay, okay, right. And that kept it in the news. That's why there are pictures of it and why people know about it. I see. So, but there are pictures of these huge cars being pulled through swamps with oxen. You know, because they. They were never stopped. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the winner was Principal Gazy, Italian chap, in his Italian 7-liter Italian. And the second place was a chap in a spiker car, Dutch spiker. He was an Englishman. But he borrowed the car. And when he got out speaking, he admitted he didn't have enough money to fund his journey. So he had to borrow petrol and borrow people to help him maneuver the car and so on. Amazing. And then when he got to the end, he's almost back to Paris. And he was eventually arrested for fraud. Because the whole thing had been a scam. The way he'd got out of the car. Really? And, anyway, Principal Gazy won. His prize was a Magnum of Mum champagne. Having traveled 9,000 miles. It took him two months. Which doesn't seem that long, considering no roads, ancient cars. Yeah, and there's a body-good effort. But he. Didn't you say that there was somebody whose sort of Butler had driven most of the way? Yeah, I think that was the English chap. I think he managed to recruit a chauffeur in the shift in the message driving. That's so good. So, of course, I mean, these are the nascent years of automobiles full stop, isn't it? Yeah. But were they capable? I mean, did the. Were the end of being enough to take them off-road? And do you think it was the kind of intrepid spirit of. Because back then, we were talking about just the air post, Richard Burton, "Hanning Speak," and all those inventors. I mean, I can't remember when King Solomon's mind and things came out. But ultimately, this idea of adventure and empire was huge in Britain. Yeah. So, is this why Europe was also such a big part of it? Because they all had their own empires and they all kind of dreamt of far-off lands? Well, yeah. And because of the empire, Africa was. Was Britain, wasn't it? It was part of Britain. Yes, and we saw that wonderful video you sent to those men who just thought, "I will go on a drive," and they basically just followed the red route of the empire through Dante Cape Town. Exactly. Well, after the First World War, as with all wars, the development of the car was a mechanical. The development was very rapid, wasn't it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because of the First World War, like always happens with the war, it accelerates everything. Yes, it goes there. So, after the war and after people recovered, by the late 20s, early 30s, adventure, people were really looking for adventure. They were a board. All these outposts that you've just spoken about, in Africa, India, and all the rest of it. They knew people there. They knew other English people. So, it was like going to see your uncle working on a tea plantation. In actually, I do know someone who did that. He drove from Camden to Assam in a mini, in 1962. I'll tell you about him later. But so, in the 30s, when this is all starting, and the car was becoming more reliable and more of a sort of understood object, that's when people started doing these great journeys. The one we spoke about was the, it ended up with a book called Turn Left, The Riffs of Rhyzen. Yes. And it was an actual incident on the trip. And the riffians were a Berber tribe in Northern Morocco. They were on this journey to Cape Town. And they actually had to turn left in Africa, in North Africa, because so it was an uprising. On their normal route. But these two men went in a Morris Eight, which is, I mean, the car would fit on this map. Yeah, I mean, it isn't big. It's a good thing. Yeah. Yeah. And they did this incredible journey. It took them sort of six or seven months. But you know, one of them was saying, you go, "Do you know why I went on this trip?" And he goes, "No, no, no, no, I never knew why." And he goes, "Because I had been rejected by a girl, and I was feeling most down." So you do what you're called, do you just send the car and drive down to the other side of the world? And the wonderful thing about it, it was filmed. We've all been there, Simon. We have, yeah, not quite that far, but it was filmed. and it's incredible and it's every. Everything, every keyshake you can imagine about colonialism, as if the pits help it, the empire building shorts. Mistarshanes. Yeah. Pipe constantly on the go. Of course, absolutely. But they did. And we're fulfilling. And in this tiny car, and the reason they could do is because the car was so small, if you don't want weight and you don't want huge tires and all the things that you've got on a modern Range Rover, that's the last thing you want. You want something really light, that if necessary, you could more or less pick it up and make it. And you mentioned the war, of course, that the RAC had, there was a kind of selection of volunteers who decided we're the ones with cars. So we'll go to the front line and help out when we can. They were kind of a volunteer. So they were almost all early day couriers for the war effort. And I mean, because there was a lot of horses, oxen who were pulling guns and things, but ultimately cars were the next thing that needed to be a substitute for them. No horses were the, you know, they were the key on the Western front. Yeah. They were, motorized vehicles were few and far behind. Yeah, I think they had a struggle when they were there. I think there's images of, of those cars really struggling with our line. Yeah, yeah. But I wonder how the troops felt, you know, the Tommy's when sort of Lord Rose be turned up in his, in his Rolls Royce phantom. Blender hand. And they've been in some rat infested trench. Well, this is great. A publication called The Wiper's Times, which is, so it would, they spelled it W-I-P-E-R-S, but it was after the fact that EEP was Y-P-R-E-S. And so they all called it wipers. And they, when they took over EEP, they found a working printing press. And basically the, a team of sort of writers or people with good gallows humor made this publication. And I bet you, if I read enough of it, there would be some sort of message. Maybe the rest. But either way, I think probably the, I like to think the gallows humor from the front line would have enjoyed the sight of Lord Rose, Richard. But, um, yes, as we said, because cars were few and far between in the first four war, compared with afterwards. Yeah, and when, when, when did, you know, electricity was what, in 1905, I think it was, or 1908, although it was, it was, it was in the first decade of the 20th century, was when electricity became something that it would be publicly accessible. Um, so when was the car something that people would frequently have? Well, I think probably, probably after 1920. Yes, yeah. You know, once, once that war finished and people getting back on their feet and they weren't afraid to sort of be seen with, to have money and all that. Yeah. That's probably when, when that happened. You know, as you said, the development of it was so rapid, we're called dog carts, some of them. Yeah. So they were literally like a cart and you suffer in this sort of bench with a tiller steering wheel. Great. And then within 15 years, they gone, you know, to sort of incredibly sort of sleek, well-designed and fast things, you know, that we do, some would do over a hundred miles an hour easily. And when was the, the Bentley blower and the Bentley boys, when that all went like? Yeah, they were sort of 20, late 20s and 30s. Yeah, they go. But that's really when sort of motor racing became, yeah, I think the people came to the, in the 20s, 30s, wolf, banato and all that. Yeah. And because it's so funny, because I think about, you know, the Travelers Club, it's a gentleman's club in London and it was set up, I think, by Wellington, at least Chetter, but I'm pretty sure it was, it was Duke of Wellington. And the rule was you could join it if you'd been 500 miles from London, which if you think about it, it's not that far. Well, not to us. They don't have easy jets. But when you think about the, the peaking to Paris, you know, that's a lot further away. They could all join. So, but the people were so, they were so intrepid, then, in a way, they're just not now. Yes, correct. So, shall we follow us forward to the Second World War? And, I guess, it's the Willie's Jeep is the sort of next iteration of a house on name off rotors. Yeah. So, where did that come from? Well, that came from the US government. They put out to tender, asking for a manufacturer to come up with a light, your utility vehicle. It was good off-road. It was very easy to maintain and very easy to build. And there was a very limited amount of time that they get. I think the only gave, I might be wrong, I think it was about five weeks, come up with this. So, these things are holding up for the moment. I mean, that's yeah, that's yeah. And they had tenders from Ford, I think, a company called Bantam. And Willis. And Willis got the contract, but it was a million. Were they an established brand? A very small company. Right, okay. And obviously, they wanted tens of thousands of these things. As somebody's best of a garden jet. Exactly. More or less. So, when they realized that they wouldn't be able to fulfill orders, that's when that's why Ford and Bantam Overland, it was called actually Bantam Overland, they made them as well to get the numbers out. Okay, so everyone chipped in and then it was a collegiate way. Everyone chipped in and it was all to this one design. Great. And they made them in France as well, a company called Hotchkiss. It took it after the war and built them in France. But the Willis Jeep was, I mean, incredible vehicle. I mean, it was super light. It had this engine called it, it was called a fireball, the engine. Yeah. And it was quite a powerful little petrol engine. Only three-speed gearbox. Obviously no roof. And super light. And super looking. Brilliant. Especially with the US Army's white star on the bonnet. Yeah. And it's kind of that, you know, it's a sort of square bonnet, isn't it? Yeah. And it just looks so super. Yeah. But it's one of those, what do they call it, form and function? You know? Yeah. It looks good because it was made for a purpose and that purpose had to be fulfilled. And it also made an amazing looking, a very cool looking vehicle. And what was the British version of that? Because before the Land Rover, there was this waterproof one, wasn't there? Well, that was, that was after the idea, because the Jeep was used by the British Army. Yes. And David Sirlings, you know, the long-range desert group, yeah, the Subscan, the SAS. They used Jeeps for a lot of their early missions. So tell me about how the Land Rover arrived on the scene. They didn't have any Land Rover in the war. Okay. Because they weren't designed till 1948. Yeah. And that again, like the one is Jeep, is an incredible, who could possibly have thought that when the Wilkes brothers, who, I think it was Morris, who designed the Land Rover, and his brother was the, was the chairman of Rover Cars. And they had a property in Anglesey. And that Land Rover was drawn out the shape by Morris Wilkes in the sand on the beach. Cool. It's like a, sort of thing, a child would draw, isn't it? It's a box. Yeah. And it pretty much remained that way when it was put into production. Yeah. And when they got the prototype, the first few prototypes going, they took them up to, they had another, a state up in Eilor. And they took them up there for testing. And the name Land Rover now, I mean, it's just everyone knows Land Rover, don't they? And it's the sort of thing that if you asked a marketing company to come up with a, a really good name for a vehicle that's for offer, they probably wouldn't be able to come out with that. And if they did, they want millions for it. Yeah. But apparently the story behind that name, they were testing these cars up on Eilor. And the, they, Gilly saw this thing going around, Scottish guy, and sort of asked what it was. And they were saying, well, we're trying to make a, you know, a car that you can use off, off road as well as on roads. And he, he sort of replied apparently, yeah. So what you're seeing is you're making a rover for the land. And so he came up with the name, you know, because it's Land Rover, isn't it? Very good. And yes, that was 1948 that went into production. But that, that was really intended to be, that was an agricultural vehicle. Yes, it's basically like a, like a tractor, but a tractor, you could, you could get up to 40 or 50 miles an hour on the road. Yeah. And pull all sorts of things behind it. And if you look at the early Land Rover at the back, there's a, there's a big hole in the back of them. These were called, these were known as the series one. Well, yeah, well, it went, that, that hole existed right up until the, the series three, which was up until the early 80s. Yeah. But that was for a thing called a power takeoff. So you could put that through, you could put this sort of prop shaft through that hole. Yeah. And you could run the engine. And it would turn this, this prop shaft and you could attach implements to it. Interesting. Yeah. Okay. So the Land Rover's out. Land Rover's out. Was it popular from the start? I think it was. Yeah. I think it was. And because people, there was competition for it because you were saying that in the 50s, there was a sort of, there was a, do you see the champ? The Austin champ. Well, the Land Rover came out in 1948. Yeah. It was the very first one. And then in the early 50s, the army wanted a vehicle that, they thought they needed something more sophisticated than the Land Rover. They had started using them. Okay. But they thought they needed something that could do more things. What they were, I don't really know. But so Austin created this, it had an incredibly long, official, M-O-D name. Yeah. To, you can't remember with lots of slashes and stuff. Yeah, sure. And lots of things. But it was basically, you know, it was an Austin champ. Okay. the champ was the civilian version of it because they had to, they were allowed to make. a certain number for sales as a villain in order to build and make a profit out of them. Right. But it was unbelievably complicated this thing. Although, well, it was fantastic in its own way, but it was just too complicated. It had a Rolls-Royce engine. Yeah. It was a small Rolls-Royce built engine. It had a gearbox that you could drive. It had five speed gearbox, which was quite unusual in the '60s. But the first gear was really literally crawling pace, so you could sort of go rocks and things like that. Yeah. And then the other four gears, you could use them in other forward or reverse. Yeah. She's quite frightening. And I can tell you it's because you've driven it. Well, or you've been in it. Yeah, when I was very small, my brothers were considerably older than me. Yeah. And by the time I was sort of four or five, they were into their 20s. And that is a good gap. We had one of these champs, so they had this champ. And I remember I was about five, and they took me out in it. And Julian was driving. And we were driving along. And he suddenly slowed down, turned around, and we started going backwards. And obviously, I didn't have a clue what was going to happen next, or what it really meant. But he said, we're just going to do some overtaking. And I didn't realize, but he was able to change up through the gearbox and get the thing into fourth gear going backwards. And I just remember being absolutely petrified. So we were going backwards in the same direction as other people going forwards. And we were going past them, you know. Oh, that's terrifying. But in some, just arguably, that could be useful for an off-roader. Well, it was for the military. It's fantastic, because it means if you need to get away quickly, you don't, the last thing you want to do is to be turning around and presenting you for entire sort of flank. Yeah. You can just back up very rapidly. Yeah. And it's an amazing looking thing as well. Really looking. You can see the water proof. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And like a Land Rover, which has got a wading depth of only about sort of, I think, half a meter. Yeah. The champ, you can go right. Just so you're completely submerged. As long as you can breathe yourself, you'll be all right. You'll be fine. Terri, yeah. Excellent. And you were saying the Churchill got a Land Rover. A Land Rover, yeah. Yeah. And that was in 1955, I think. Okay. As well. He was presented to him by Land Rover as sort of thank you for everything you've done. Yeah. Even though by then, I think he was. He's getting on. Yeah. The Land Rover wanted to sort of say thank you to him for everything he'd done. Yeah. And so they made this Land Rover 86 inch wheelbase at Series 1. And it was specially made for him in as much as it had an extra wide passenger seat. So they did away with the third seat in the middle. Because he was quite broad. Yeah. Can we find a more child for him? He's better upholster than the Land Rover. And he's respectful to the old man. And it had leather, sort of leather grab handle to make it more comfortable, you know, because you'd have to be driven by that. Yeah. So the sexual way to the leather grab handle, a leather door opener as well. And in the back, there was a box, which is a fitted, especially for his Brickling gear. Because his hobby was Brickling. Love Brickling. So he could put his child in there, a few breaks, bit of cement. We were a hod. So that car was sold off from a chop well estate in the '70s. And it had been used on the farm there. And it was sold in a farm sale with lots of implements and all the rest of it. And a man bought it and subsequently sold it to this other chap called Frank Key, who had a farm in St Mary Cray in Kent. And he kept it and used it as a farm vehicle for years and years. And then in 2000, Sotheby's held its first online auction and persuaded this chap Frank Key to put the car in sale. And as a result, they wanted to get some publicity for it. And so they said, "Don't want to go and have a look at this land drove and write a story about it," which I did. And he let me drive it. It's quite amazing. It's just been in the bar. So you driven it? Yeah. Amazing. He just gave me the key. He said, "I'll just take it around the field." That's right. Which at the time seemed insane, you know, for this old battered Landry. And he didn't guess it. So he put it away, kept it for 15 years, and then it was put up for auction again, 2015. At that time, it made 129,000. Amazing. So the Landry was coming out. It was becoming popular. Churchill had one. But the rest of the world was doing what exactly with cars? Was it all saloon? Well, there were other companies in Europe. For example, it made a sort of Jeep-like vehicle as a per show and other European manufacturers. But over in America, Jeep itself, which had obviously produced the first really kind of effective off-road vehicle, as we know them nowadays, as in the Willis Jeep. Yeah, yeah. They, in the '50s, America, you know, it was becoming incredibly affluent. Yes. It was the brave new world, doesn't it? Great time for cars. Fantastic time for cars. Amazing design. You, Rick, and all those. Yeah, amazing Chevrolet. Yeah, amazing. And women were becoming sort of, they were getting into cars. And cars were being built in America with women in mind. And they would advertise things like, you know, incredible interiors, materials for interiors. The idea was that women would be able to go and choose sort of from 30 different tartans or whatever for a pulse tree. Got, OK. And the Waggeneer came out. The Waggeneer. The Waggeneer. Which is built on a pickup truck platform. Yeah, great car. And it turns the space in the back because the idea was that women, you know, would be able to go off and do their shopping in it. But then the whole family could go. Yes, yeah. And they could have these adventures. And because it was a Jeep, because it was the four-wheel drive, they could go off into the woods and into the backcountry and go camping and do all these sort of wholesome things. And then we have, I guess, worth going always sort of revisiting what Landryve was doing because it certainly wasn't necessarily built as a kind of luxury item, as you were saying. It was for farming. But even when church had gone with leather, leather upholstery, it was still, you know, as far as bricklaying in the back. You know, it wasn't sort of here. We're giving you a luxury car. When did that start to set in? Well, I think the Waggeneer kicked it off. Yeah. But that was very much sort of confined to America. Yeah. But in the '60s, mid '60s, Rover decided they wanted to make a Landryve that was more comfortable and was faster, and that you could use as a normal car for going on the motorway sort of coming in. Yeah. But which was also very good off-road. So the Range Rover had coil springs, had a bigger engine, a big V8, a petrol engine, which was basically a Buick-based engine going right back to the '50s. And it wasn't luxurious inside at all. I mean, it had plastic massing everywhere. The idea that you could clean it out easily. Yeah. A lot of them had plastic seats, but you could have cloth if you wanted to. The dashboard was hardly anything to it. Literally a little binocle with a speedometer and a water temperature and a petrol gauge. Gauge, yeah. Very, very simple. And the way it differed from the normal Landryve was permanently in four-wheel drive. So this thing was really practical because it had a tailgate opened, split, with split. The glass top had opened up. Yes. And then the bottom of it, you could fell down, you could sit on it. Yeah. And it was promoted as something for wealthier people who didn't want something really uterine, but did want something that they could say to a speedboat with. Or they could tow glider with it. Or go shooting. Or go to Polo. Yeah. Or go shooting, yeah. But this Range Rover, I mean, it really was good because you're 90 miles an hour, which doesn't sound very fast nowadays. But it meant that on the motorway, you could cruise long at 70 and you wouldn't be much quieter than a Land Rover. Much, much more comfortable, had really good heater, had power steering, had all these things, it just made it much more luxurious to drive. Although it really wasn't particularly by today's side, it wasn't much luxurious. So when did all those permutations of, let's see, the Vogue, the Autobiography, the Defender, the Discovery, all these different varieties of… Well, the Vogue. It was called the Invogue, actually originally, the Range Rover Invogue. That came out in 1983 and it was a collaboration with Vogue magazine, which just shows how it had become… Interesting. …with, you know, in 10 years, 10 or 12 years, that Range Rover had become a symbol of sort of fashion, wealth. But before then, in 1971, they did the Daringap Expedition with two Range Roads, which only had been out for less than a year. So for people in general, can you just explain the Daringap? Daringap is a short stretch of jungle between Panama and Colombia. And it's about 60 miles long, but it's virtually impenetrable. And people have tried to drive through it and succeeded in the past. I think as far back as the '30s, some Brazilian guys were doing a drive through America and it took them 10 years to do it. Really? Because there were so few roads in the last two years. And John Blaschrid's Nell. The great John Blaschrid's Nell. He led this expedition. It was actually the Trans-America's expedition. But this Blaschrid's Sine expedition was significant because it showed the range over how incredibly capable it was. Really? Although having said that, there are lots of pictures of it being pulled out by, they took some land drove as well. Don't let the goods be the end of the perfect time. No, exactly. But they did do it. And that's one of those range drove is in the National Motor Museum. Oh great. Yeah. Could you potentially argue that the Royal family are partly to blame for the way in which the range Rover became seen as a luxury good? I suppose the reasons the Royal family had them is because they wanted to support a British made product, which it was. Yeah. Because it was British Leland. I mean, it belongs to Tata now. It's an Indian company. To support a British company. And because they were very good vehicles. I mean, a range Rover is ideal, isn't it, for your Polo? Go into Polo. Yep. And Bucking Palace. The Queen, she deserved to have a bit of comfort. Right. It was ideal. Yes. And I guess the kind of commanding driving position was, which is popular for everybody, everyone likes that about any SUV is that height that you get when you get in one. And certainly, Range Rover were really good at that. But you're right. The Queen should travel around in comfort as they fought. Because certainly with Princess Diana and whatever kind of there is a sense of whatever the Royal family do, certainly it trickles down. And so the Aristocracy will follow. And that's probably when they started to sort of enhance the range of, you know, because it then from there it just got more and more luxurious. Yes. With more and more unnecessary things that made it or not necessarily an unnecessary, but things that made it more of a road car, unless of an off-road car, that's what happened. I mean, footballers were buying Rangers. Yeah, yeah. And so they bought out the Discovery, which is between the sort of very utilitarian normal Land Rover and the getting more luxurious Range Rover. And the Arsiterance Conor Rounds designed the interior. And it was absolutely brilliant. It had all sorts of places to put things, places to hold on to. We had seats at the back, at the very, very back, facing inwards like you've described with the other Land Rovers. Two little seats in the back. You could fill all the seats down and make space to put things, had a sort of step-true so you could get a better height at the back. And it was a brilliant vehicle, really, really fantastic because it had the comfort of a Range Rover, not the luxury, but just the comfort. And you know, the capability of a normal Land Rover. Great. But then it also has to go wrong when the whole Range started to become a luxury car, which was, I don't think you're mind me saying it, but Jeremy Govan, who is the head of design at JLR, he wanted these things to become luxury cars because the margins on anything luxury are much better than with the horror and it's just a fact. And they did an amazing job of turning that brand into a luxury brand. But in doing so, even the defender, the modern defender, it's very complicated. The interior is not something that you would throw a load of hay in the back or. No. Chucklewood. The church wouldn't throw his bricks in. No. You'd pretty do about sort of a thousand pounds of damage to the upholstery. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But their aim was to sell cars and that's what they've succeeded in doing. They have turned it into a luxury brand as a result. Yes, it has become that. And certainly, I have from further the fact that it's now become a sort of go-to for the nappy valley set. So when I'm doing the school run, there's a lot of mums driving the defender as you just take it to school. These were not urban vehicles, but now are bona fide. Totally. And whether we'd like it or not, they're very much at the pinnacle of I think people's status symbols today. They really are. And. But the defender has joined that too with the. Exactly. I mean, it looks amazing. But the interesting thing is how the old defenders are being picked up as well and being converted into luxury vehicles or at least vehicles that come on extremely high prices. Well, as we said earlier on, you can't imagine in the late 1940s when they were drawing out that shape in the sand, who could ever have believed that 75 years later that same shape would still be considered to be not only a brilliant design, but a symbol of sort of coolness. Yes. A symbol of adventure and a symbol of a sort of maverick symbol. This is a car that belongs to someone who wants to be a bit different. Oh, yeah. I mean, if you see an old defender driving around London today, you just assume the guy is just in town to pick up sort of good and essentials for his next trip. I mean, they are cool carmens. As you say, they've been adopted by super wealthy people who want to project an image of sort of being gung-ho adventurous. They want a land river, but they don't want. They want one that looks incredible. So they go to these companies like this one in Portugal and went to the other week called Cool and Vintage. Yeah. I mean, that kind of. I mean, as names go, that's fairly on the nose. It is. Cool and vintage. Yeah. So for a starting price of 180,000 euros, they will take. You can supply land river, they find one for you. And they'll spend three years building it up into a land river. But it'll have a funky paint job. It'll have leather upholstery in all of the street. And a lot of this sort of bad things about the original land river will have been rectified and they'll use more modern materials and things like that. But it emerges as a vehicle that. I mean, the paintwork alone is 25,000 euros to have one of the. For them to paint one of these things. I mean, no one's going to go out in that and go charging through the desert or. No. you know, some gravel track. Probably, you know, I wouldn't have thought. Anyway. There has been a kind of an attempt at a remedy of the old off-roader, hasn't there? Well, the interesting about the Defender being axed is that as soon as they were selling maybe 10 or 15,000 euros, the reason they got rid of it apparently was because they weren't selling enough and they weren't profitable. Even though the price had gone up to the sort of low 30,000s, but they'd done virtually nothing to develop it at all. I mean, that's why you can always tell the land river, because it's exactly the same as the original one. Yeah. And it was also. Didn't have any safety equipment in it at all. No, you can't have an airbag in a land river. There are obviously lots of hard surfaces to. You're going to hear it to the Eucalylation. And because it's aluminium, they were pretty flimsy and built on the original type of chassis going back to the same as the one from the 80s, right? But then once people realised they weren't able to get these things, suddenly everyone wanted to. You used to buy hunting. Yeah. And particularly during COVID, land river prices were going insane. And in America, they're massively popular, the older ones. And they're willing to pay sort of a hundred thousand dollars for a decent Defender over there. But home comfort is probably key as well. So this is why these brands are able to kind of shove sort of modern amenities within the car than they're able to kind of jack up the price even more. Well, then drove themselves, of course. They've kept back plenty of Defenders. And they've realised they've seen this market for sort of jazzed up Defenders. And the occasion produced limited editions of insane prices. And they've done a church or tribute one for turn. They've made ten of them, a turn 150,000 each. But 250,000 each. Christ God. But so did Jim Rackliffe. He saw an opportunity, didn't he? Well, Jim Rackliffe wanted to buy the rights to build the Defender. So, so Jim? So Jim? So Jim? Yes. He wanted to buy the rights from Land Rover. Yes. And he offered them money for it, not a certain. They wouldn't let him do it. So being of means, he thought, well, so do you, I'll just go and do my own one. And along, Ken the Grand, and he was going to build it in Wales. Yes. He wanted it to be a British vehicle. But then Mercedes had a factory in France where they built the smart car and they built the G-Wagon, you know, which is the Mercedes off-road vehicle, which has also become symbolic of sort of very wealthy people. Yeah. That is the case for so many SUVs. Look at the Volvo XC90. You don't need a Volvo XC90. you can have Volvo XC60, but people go for the 90 just because it's that, that, it's like going up to 11 in spinal taps. Do you know what I mean? It's like, yeah, yeah, all these brands have sort of decided we need to be in the SUV. Yeah, I do. I mean, Ferrari have done, I've done one Lamborghini have done one. Maserati, they've all done. The SUV is the biggest selling car, a category now, by miles. I mean, that is amazing, but all because it's, it's, it's a, it's a, both an expression of I guess status and somewhere or other or this is what people think at least. And, but also, utility wise, they're very useful. You can get a lot of stuff in them. You can get a lot of stuff in them, you travel with them, maybe COVID, it's by people to travel to holiday by car more. There was a bit of that. And so, yeah, it's sort of, it's, it's become an essential thing for every brand. And that's really fascinating because these, you know, brands that had made their name through making the slickest, sleekest, most, I mean, Porsche again, there's another one, you know, Porsche, Porsche is known for a car that I cannot fit into because I'm too big. And yet they have to make these, this SUV was at the KN. Yeah. And so, the idea that the, the sexier, the slicker you are as a car brand, the cooler you are, is kind of out the window these days. It's now the bigger you are and the more, the more stuff you can fit into the car, that's, that's a mark of how you get ahead within the market. Yeah. And that's fascinating because I, I can't really put my finger on what the justification for that is, I think it's probably multiple. But it is, it's a status symbol, isn't it? Yeah. I mean, like you're saying about at school, you know, the school gates with the defenders. And it makes it all the more interesting that along comes to Jim McLeff and is like, you know what, I'm going to go back to basics and put, you know, it's, it's expensive to start a car from scratch. And because it's everything's brand new for the grenadier. And, you know, for building that for nothing costs a huge amount of money. But presumably with a belief that there's an appetite for, for the rich and more off-roader. Yeah. Well, there is because otherwise the, the Land Rover Defender and, and it's, and it's sort of ancestors. They wouldn't so be so popular. Yeah. But what he's done is, I'm sure Land Rover must be thinking that they should have done that. Just, you know, had one offering that was a genuine utility vehicle rather than a luxury vehicle. I mean, you see these defenders, he's new on to those idiotic sort of boxes on the side, don't you? Yes, I still know what that for. There's to put your, your dog towel in if dog towels a bit wet. Do you have dogs? I do, but I haven't got a dog towel container on this. But I mean, that just, that just tells you how those cars are not meant to have things chucked in the back of them. You have to have a dog towel container or to put your wellies in. And you see people driving with these sort of, these sort of car bunkles stuck on the side. And then it's a ladder. And then there's some, you know, the school run mum there with sort of fingernails, sort of about four inches long in all the Botox and all the rest of it, looking absolutely immaculate. I mean, when was the last time they went up that ladder? Yeah. Got quite. The grand idea has a ladder. The grand idea has a ladder, justifiably so. Yeah. Now you were on an expedition with the, yeah, I suppose it was a bit of an expedition, but it was part of like the early driving experience with them. Yeah. And the way they did it was to start in the North Scotland. And they invited different people on different legs. So you'd go for two or three days and eventually the route led to the Grenadier pub in Belgrade area, which belongs to Jim Raikler. It is the owners. Yeah. And the reason people call the Grenadier is because that's where he had the idea for it. Yeah. But when you're Jim Raikler, if you can do things like that, then when you want to call your different models of Grenadier, things like trialmaster or trailmaster, you can go and buy bell stuff. So that was very good. And we drove down through various sort of stalking estates and it snowed. It was in January. Yeah. It was a really bad weather. And really went on the road because we went through all these huge stalking estates. Oh, lovely. And it was a fantastic car. It is a great car with those sort of strange additions to it, which aren't additions. They're really their subtractions. Like how when you steer, you have to return the wheel to center. It doesn't, you know, whereas with most cars, it kind of automatically brings everything back. You have to sort of a little marker on the top of the steering wheel that shows you what's top, what's bottom? No, it feels much more like it feels like the defender could have what it could have become. Yeah. If they just, you know, made a few changes to it. With that in mind, then, depending on how well people have received the Grenadier and so forth, I mean, don't know what your opinion isn't that. Where do you see the future of off-roading SUVs, all that kind of stuff? Do you think Sir Jim is going to sort of spark a kind of renaissance in that, or is it? Well, it's just. I mean, the main problem with it is all this is this sort of move towards electrification because. Yeah. If you want to go off in some of nowhere in your, even your modern defender, you can chuck a few cans of diesel in the back or petrol, whatever it is it runs on. If you're going to be an electric vehicle, you don't want to go 300 miles. Yeah, you're stuffed into it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Unless you've got a very long extension lead. Yes. So I think that. I don't know what's going to happen with all that, with that whole kind of segment of the car market, because they'll literally just become urban vehicles, wouldn't they? Yeah, I think. I mean, Range Rover. They have made an electric range over fully electric. But isn't it right that people have kind of discovered that actually hybrids the best through forward because electric is just very, very difficult to. fully electric is very difficult to manage. You know, charging is a nightmare. It, you know, air conditioning just uses up an awful lot of energy. Yes, you know. And energy heating uses up an awful lot of the battery. So it's just very complicated to. Well, as far as the other problem with hybrid cars at the moment is that you've got all this extra complication and weight for not really much gain, because I mean, something like the Bentley Continental has a really good hybrid system. Yeah. But it's still only do 50 miles to the gun. On the electric. Yeah, okay. It won't do 50 miles to the gun, it'll probably do 30, if you're lucky. Okay. You've only got a 50 mile electric range. Oh, the electric, okay. You know, if you could get it up to two, three hundred miles on electric range, that would be a big difference. But 50 miles doesn't get you to Oxford from here. Does it get you to Oxford? I mean, it's ideal for driving around London, going to Oxford, or whatever you do. But in terms of being able to rely on it, you know, take your long distance. Fortunately for me in my nostalgic world that I rather like, you know, looking back fondly retrospectively, romantically seems to be the best reward when it comes to the off road is because the best perhaps is behind us with a sprinkling of the. Ineos going to data keep us. I think it is because everything's so sort of excessive nowadays, isn't it? Everything, there seems to be some belief that you have to have more of everything and bigger this certain other and more more complexity and so on. Whereas when they made cars like Citroen 2CV or the Renault 4, the thinking was logical. It's. You want something light, don't you? I mean, that car was. There's a story that the original design brief was to make a car that you could drive across a field in with a tray of eggs in the back and the eggs wouldn't get broken by the end of it. So it's made with very sort of compliance suspension, very narrow wheels, not very much power because I mean, you don't really need loads of power in an off-road vehicle. You just need something that'll keep going. So, this little 2CN wrench in the front is extremely light, very good ground clearance. All this things are understandable. You know, you can see the logic in all these things. Whereas all the things that they put on modern SUVs are purely there for a screech-acumference. Which doesn't make it an off-road vehicle. It makes it an urban, an luxury vehicle. Well, it's been a fascinating story to tell. Thank you very much Simon. Thank you for coming in. There isn't anyone better to have this discussion with and it was fun to sort of revisit the good old days. The good old days. There's still with us. Even if it's just in our minds. Well, you've got the old Land Rover's at home. The Land Rover's, yeah. And so you get to, when you're back to the Grimp and Maya, you can relive it. Yeah, well, do. I mean, that's especially with winter coming on. Yeah. Well, safety for you, thank you for coming. Thanks for having me. It's been lovely and very nice, very nice gentleman's study we're in here. We'll come back soon. We'll do. And we'll find something else to talk about. Thank you, Tom. Thanks, Owen. I remain Tom Chamberlain and this has been the luxury dispatch. The podcast that tells all the stories you didn't realize you wanted to know and answers all the questions you were yet to ask. Please do like, subscribe. And if you have any comments, we look forward to reading them. Agree, disagree, suggest other topics you'd like to hear from us. No review will go unread. Thank you for listening.