Once upon a time, in the years 1974-2006.. there were “Classic”-shaped Range Rovers everywhere. Every street had a green one on someone’s driveway, and every farm had a black one covered in mud with no tailgate. Every school run would show a handful of wheezing, oily, leaking monsters dropping off little Johnny in his Barbour jacket.. and every organic market had a line of them with carrots sticking out the back.
However.. somehow, they’ve all vanished – and I’m concerning myself with the mystery of where they’ve all gone.. and if one or two end up in my driveway in the meantime, so be it.
Some of them went the way of this otherwise-not-too-trashed example:
…whereas others have been cannibalised for far-more-valuable MG, TVR, Morgan, and Buick (yes, really) cheap V8 conversions. Given that a running Range Rover can be had for $500 or so, it’s not really a surprise.. and that’s an awful lot of rusting 4×4 steel and Lucas wiring problems for your money. The problem with this as an explanation is that most of the heaps in scrapyards, Craigslists, and so on are Discoveries – they’re not Range Rovers at all. I don’t think the sales figures were all that different.. so that still doesn’t explain where any of them have actually gone.
The perennial reputation as a money pit doesn’t seem to help – yes, there’s always an ever-increasing list of electrical problems to deal with, and no car marks its territory quite like Solihull’s finest. You never know. Maybe there’s a stash of tens of thousands of them on an airfield in Arizona.. or in a cave in Wales.. or in a bog in Oregon.. it could happen, and if anyone finds out they’ll be worth a fortune. I look at it this way.. when the apocalypse comes, the wipers coming on whenever you turn the heater on is not going to stop us escaping to higher ground.
I’m not selling mine.
0 Comments