It’s 75 years since the first Land Rover appeared, a vehicle that began with a sketch on an Anglesey beach and has remained part of the motoring landscape to this day. Pretty much unrivalled in appearance and ability, its popularity has never waned – and an old Landy is as coveted today as it’s ever been.
The second and third generations are the ones that interest us here, with the Series II arriving in 1958 and featuring mild styling changes and a choice of rugged petrol and diesel engines. Just three years later, further development gave us the Series IIA, this version ultimately gaining larger, more powerful engines and the likes of servo-assisted brakes. So successful was the Land Rover recipe, it was this generation that marked production of the 500,000th example.
The Series III duly arrived in 1971, the most notable changes during its life being a conventional plastic dashboard replacing the plain metal panel and the option of the Buick-derived 3.5-litre V8. There was even an attempt to add a little more comfort and on-road appeal in the form of the County station wagon. By the time the Series III bowed out in 1985, superseded by the coil-sprung 90 and 110, some 440,000 had been made.
