Land Rover Range Rover Classic

Bache's Range Rover is one of the great examples of a shape that got left alone. The proportions are almost entirely functional: a straight waistline set high, a roof that appears to float on blacked-out pillars, a clamshell bonnet with a raised centre section, and a tailgate split into upper and lower halves. There is no ornament anywhere and very little that could be removed. The construction explains a lot of it. Where a utility Land Rover used panels rolled from single sheets of aluminium, the Range Rover hung aluminium panels on a steel safety frame, a method Rover had already proved on the P6 saloon. That gave Bache flatter, larger surfaces to work with and kept the corrosion-resistant alloy skin on the outside. The bonnet and door hinges were exposed on early cars and gradually evolved out of sight, which is a quick way to place one by eye. Inside, this was the first appearance of Bache's trademark symmetric dashboard, an idea that reads as functional restraint and was also very cheap to build in left- and right-hand drive. In the early 1970s the Musée du Louvre exhibited a Range Rover as an exemplary work of industrial design, which was more than the factory was claiming for it at the time.

The Range Rover has a stronger competition record than any other Land Rover product, and it earned it early. It won the Paris-Dakar in 1979, the first running of the event, with Alain Génestier, and won again in 1981 with René Metge. Two outright victories in the hardest endurance rally raid there was, from a vehicle designed to carry hay bales and a family with equal indifference. It also opened the Camel Trophy. The event began in 1980 on licence-built Jeeps, Land Rover took over in 1981 with the Range Rover, and Range Rovers ran again in 1982 and 1983 alongside Series IIIs, with a Range Rover TD returning in 1987. Those years turned Land Rover into a competition brand, and the Range Rover was the vehicle that started it. Before either came the harder thing. In 1971 and 1972 the British Trans-Americas Expedition drove north to south through both American continents, and two Range Rovers, with a Series IIA alongside, were among the first vehicles ever to force a way through the Darién Gap, where there is no road at all.

The Range Rover created the vehicle the world now buys more of than anything else, which is a strange legacy for something designed to be hosed out. By the 1980s it had become the default transport of the British countryside at its most moneyed, and the name had stopped describing a vehicle and started describing a social position. That happened without Land Rover planning it, which is why the interior took a decade to catch up with the badge. America got it late and took to it quickly. The official launch came at the Los Angeles Auto Show in January 1987, imports of factory-built US models began that March, and a network of thirty-six dealers had grown to sixty-five by 1988. Playboy named it Best 4x4 that year, which tells you exactly where the vehicle had landed in the American imagination. Spen King watched all of it and did not enjoy the ending. In 2004 he said publicly that vehicles like the Range Rover he created were never intended as a status symbol, and that later incarnations of his design seemed to be intended for exactly that. He drew the first one. He is allowed the last word on it.

A Classic rewards the buyer who bought the right one and punishes everybody else, and the dividing line is rust. The steel chassis rots from inside its box sections, and behind the aluminium skin the steel safety frame, the bulkhead, the inner wings and the sills go the same way. Because the outer panels stay corrosion-resistant and tidy, the vehicle can look healthy while the structure is not. A galvanised replacement chassis is an established repair and worth paying for. The Rover V8 is easy to work on and unforgiving about heat. Keep the cooling system honest and it runs a very long way. Let it overheat badly once and a dropped liner is possible. Oil leaks are normal and rarely serious. Electrics are of their era, which means earths, connectors and switchgear rather than modules. Air suspension on late cars settles overnight as the system tires, and plenty have been converted back to coil springs. What catches people out is trim. Interior parts, headlinings and switchgear for early cars are harder to source than anything mechanical, so a complete, unworn cabin is worth chasing even at the cost of a tireder engine.