Posted on 03/26/2008 7:45:32 PM PDT by PotatoHeadMick
Foreign companies and governments sometimes spend millions of pounds on research trying to "get inside the British mind", but there is a simpler way to work out what makes the traditional Englishman tick.
Just find an old Land Rover, fire up its engine, and take it for a short drive down a country lane.
The noise! The discomfort! Most of all the smell! The aroma is an odd mixture of Castrol oil, barn dust and chicken droppings. For some inexplicable reason, this is true of Land Rovers around the world, from Kettering to Kinshasa. They all have that smell, even when they have been nowhere near an East Anglian egg farm.
There really isn't anything else in the world quite like them for sheer, Anglo-Saxon quirkiness. To drive a "Landie" is almost to become part of the very soil of Mother England - and certainly, given the abysmal suspension, to be juddered by its ridges and ruts.
So it was a bit disorientating yesterday to hear the news that Land Rover, along with that other very British motoring marque, Jaguar, has been sold to the Indians.
Tata, a big Indian industrial group, has paid £1.15billion for the brands after long negotiations with their current owners, the multi-national Ford. I wonder if the Indians realise quite what they have bought.
After all, you never really own a Land Rover. It owns you, often with ruinous consequences for your bank account.
My last Landie, a long wheelbase job which we used to reach our cottage at the bottom of a steep Cotswolds hill, did about eight miles to the gallon. By the end, the fuel bills were costing more than my mortgage.
Land Rovers are not an "easy drive". On older models, the steering wheels tend to shudder and shake.
Piloting a pedigree Land Rover can make you look like an actor in a 1940s black-and-white Hollywood film, when actors like Spencer Tracy keep shifting their hands on the steering wheel to keep the vehicle on the road.
If you are bouncing down a farm track, it is worth keeping your fingers away from the Land Rover's steering wheel's spokes, which can jolt the moment the tyres hit a pothole. I once broke a finger by failing to appreciate this basic 'rule of thumb'.
Old Land Rover foot pedals are so high they can give you cramp at the back of the thighs if you try to do too much gear-changing. The electrical instruments can be notoriously unreliable, perhaps because the fusebox is situated just near the gear stick and is easily kicked by careless gumboots.
The brakes on older models are on the soggy side, the ventilation little more than a slatted hole in the front of the dashboard and the speedometer needle trembles like a Bedlington terrier's back quarters.
Any Land Rover driver asked by a sarcastic policeman: "Do you know how fast you were going, sir?" can justifiably reply: "That's a very good question, constable, to which I have no exact answer."
All these sound like good reasons for NOT becoming a Land Rover owner. And yet they are all part of the strange allure of these goggle-eyed darlings of ditch and dell, with their flapping awnings and muddied spaniels.
As in most love affairs, Land Rover drivers inhabit a dreamy place beyond the reach of logic. Some of the dials on my current Land Rover - a scratched, blue, 25-year- old pick-up version - have given up the ghost completely, while other parts of the beast work only after a good whack with a gloved hand. The heating and demister fan did work once but it certainly hasn't thrown out any useful heat since the turn of the millennium.
Who cares? These workhorses of the British countryside were never about convenience or an easy life. They were built as no-nonsense rural machines with as few gizmos as possible. The one concession to the high-life was a cigarette lighter - the better for lighting a field of stubble.
The Americans who run Ford never really seemed to "get" Land Rover during their brief spell of ownership, since acquiring the brand eight years ago.
They tried to bring in various improvements but they left owners and traditionalists pretty cold.
As a result, they over-prettified things, turning out some snarly gas-guzzling monsters at the top of the market but under-applying themselves to the agricultural community which made Land Rover famous.
Whisper this among yourselves, but it is rumoured that some of the newer models have (shiver) electric windows and air conditioning. Where will the world end?
Such innovations have yet to reach my ageing charabanc. There are some winter mornings, I admit, when I slightly curse my attachment to my smoking old rustbucket.
For many years now, it has had a dent in the roof which collects rain water. This cascades over the edge and drips through the long-perished rubber window seals, soaking the occupants of the driving compartment.
Then there is the matter of the radio, rigged up by the previous owner, which tunes into only two stations (Radio Four and irritating Radio Five Live), and picks up the rhythm of the windscreen wipers and accelerator. The tailgate also requires something of a knack - to be more precise, a strong hoof - before it will return to its position.
Driving through deep puddles is another experience. Owing to certain holes in the floor, water jets high into the driving cabin unless you take things slowly.
Yet I would not swop it. When I am behind the wheel of my Landie, bombing along at top speed of 53mph, I feel at one with the world.
So while Land Rover's sale to Tata may merely be a routine piece of multi-national business, it still leaves a pang in my English heart. Will the new owners, when planning Land Rover's future, bear in mind the motoring heritage they have acquired?
Apart from looking after the company's fine Midlands workforce, will they cherish Land Rover's unfussy Britishness and realise that, as well as being a motor vehicle, this machine embodies a very British rural way of life?
The decline of traditional British motoring names may be an inevitable result of globalisation - but it still hurts.
From Alvis and Austin, so many great marques have gone. Morris? History. Wolseley? Gone. Triumph? Defunct. Even Rolls-Royce has slipped from British ownership.
I've no doubt that the people at Tata are exemplary businessmen and engineers. But few of them can claim to know what it was like to sit at the controls of a World War II bomber.
And few of them, in the event of a prang, will be able to reach into the toolbox, draw out a spanner, and simply unscrew the afflicted piece of bodywork (which was probably pretty dented beforehand, anyway).
Long live such simplicity. Long live basic, unfussy, country values. Long live the Land Rover, wherever her future may take her.
It's odd as it's been owned by the Americans (Ford) for the past eight years and his comment at the end "And few of them, in the event of a prang, will be able to reach into the toolbox, draw out a spanner, and simply unscrew the afflicted piece of bodywork (which was probably pretty dented beforehand, anyway)" is a bit idiotic as I daresay any Indian would be better at fixing bent bodywork than the average Brit!
Great company. I just wish that the US’ absurd safety regulations didn’t prevent the exceptional Land Rover Defender from ever coming back to these shores. That’s a REAL SUV.
Say Ta-ta to Land Rover and Jaguar!
Imagine !
A curry powered Land Rover!
I’ve never driven a Land Rover, always wanted to.
No disrespect to Indians or Tata, but I feel their ( the Brits) pain. It was the same for me when Daimler took Chrysler.
That was part of our history, our culture, it was US!
I’ve owned several Range Rovers...have an ‘89 and an ‘03 at the moment. The ‘89 is from the British-owned era, and the ‘03 is from the Ford era (but designed during BMW’s ownership, fortunately!) BMW management ended up referring to Land Rover as The English Patient. I love ‘em though! We’ve had the ‘89 since 1991, and the ‘03 since new.
Gotta love that English funny-speak.
Had I not spent some time in Jollye Olde England, I might think the author was describing some sort of perverted sexual act.
What a great vehicle. My introduction to rallying began with one of these machines. Regardless of the terrain, whatever the speed, you just couldn’t break the things! I would take one in a heartbeat!
These things will go places that most other so called “off-road” vehicles would balk at.
“Prang” is also Air Force and test-pilot-speak.
I think it means a botched landing.
From what I’ve heard about them, they’re usually on their way to the repair shop.
Did the Indians also buy up Lucas? LOL
PRANG is the sound of bending metal. When you "prang it" it means you bend it which means you more than botched the landing. A prang can be minor damage which you walk away from with minor repairs or it can be a flaming ball of fuel and metal of which most is melted. Prangs are not good!
“Did the Indians also buy up Lucas? LOL”
THE PRINCE OF DARKNESS
Old joke: the reason Britons drink their beer warm is because they own Lucas refrigerators.
Some commentators think Tata’s ownership might be better than Ford's decidedly mixed management of the two specialist car makers. Through its ownership of Corus steel and Tetley Tea, Tata has built up a fine reputation in the art of arm's-length management.
“Barring disasters, Tata has perfected this delicate art and the brands can more than take Indian ownership,” said the KPMG Professor of Automotive Management, Peter Cooke. “Senior finance people will go in and Tata will benefit from the technical base of both companies, as well as Jaguar's hold in North America and Land Rover's global reach.”
Tata made its hands-off intentions clear earlier this month at the Geneva motor show, when chairman Ratan Tata said: “We plan to retain the image, touch and feel of these brands, and not to tinker with them in any way.”
Landrover bodies have always been made of aluminium, and don't rust. One of the reasons why so many 50-year old Land Rovers are still working the farms.
I learned to drive in a 1948 Land Rover (the first year they were made). In those early models there was no syncromesh, so you had to double declutch for every gear change. There were no exterior door handles: the doors had a curious triangular canvas flap, which you had to reach through to open the door from the inside. And to refuel you had to lift out the driver’s seat to reveal the fuel tank underneath - good incentive not to smoke! When I bought this as a student in 1964 it had already done 150000 miles. Immediately after passing my driving test I took it with a friend in a three month trip throughout Europe, including the roughest roads imaginable in Yugoslavia and Greece. No mechanical preparation before we went. Not a single mechanical problem on the road, apart from a couple of punctures.
Amazing vehicle.
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