Land Rover Series/Land Rover Defender
There was something nice about the era when a car company made a single car and they made it incredibly. There was no need for fancy names, it was just the name of the company attached to the vehicle. Such was the case with the original Land Rover. At the time they were named simply that. As time has passed they were called Series1/Series2/Series3 to differentiate the production models. Finally, once the Land Rover group purchased Range Rover, it was time for names, and thus the vehicle was dubbed the Defender.
This incredible vehicle actually owes its creation to the second world war. The Land Rover company had to retool their production. They didn’t have the resources to make luxury cars anymore, and frankly, they didn’t have the market for it either. One of the designers had been using a surplus war jeep for farm tasks. So why not create a vehicle that could also function as a tractor and provide added utility? That’s exactly what they chose to do with the Land Rover.
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The most “tractory” feature of the early Land Rover is the power take-off option. This is an option that tractors require for hauling the truly heavy machinery and equipment that requires power. It allows you to siphon some of the energy the engine is producing and use it to run the machinery that is being towed behind the vehicle.
It turned out that farm equipment demand quickly shrank so the Land Rover never developed into that. However, they found out that it was one incredibly strong and tough vehicle. It was stronger and faster than other similar vehicles and it was capable of going off-road into places that other vehicles only dreamed of. Most of the tractor features were removed. The steering wheel was no longer in the middle and some changes were made to the framing. The power take-off remained for quite a while, however. The car sold like hotcakes and was one of the original and toughest SUVs to ever exist. It doesn’t matter that it was well before the time people realized what SUV’s were.
