Land Rover was the name of one of the first British civilian all-terrain utility vehicles, first produced by Rover in 1947. Eventually, the Land Rover division was split off from Rover, and produced an expanding range of four wheel drive vehicles under a succession of owners, including British Leyland, British Aerospace, BMW, and, from 2000, Ford in the Premier Automotive Group. Land Rovers are manufactured in Solihull, England (near Birmingham) and exported around the world.

Contents

1 History 2 Company timeline 3 Models 4 Abilities 5 Safety 6 Quality problems 7 External links 8 References

History

The first Land Rover was designed in 1947 by Maurice Wilkes as a farm vehicle that could be used for everything from ploughing fields to driving in town, based on Willys Jeeps he had seen in action in World War II. The first Land Rover the centre steer was built almost entirely from Willy's Jeep components. A distinctive feature has been their bodies, constructed of a lightweight rustproof proprietary alloy of aluminium and magnesium called Birmabright; most feature sturdy ladder-frame chassis. The vehicles are designed to be field-serviced; advertisements for Rovers have bragged about vehicles driven thousands of miles on banana oil.

Land Rovers, particularly the commercial and military models, became ubiquitous throughout rural areas and in the developing World. The Land Rover featured in the South African movie The Gods Must Be Crazy illustrates the love-hate relationship many owners feel with the early series vehicles.

Land Rovers have competed in the Paris Dakar Rally as well as being the vehicle used for the Camel Trophy as part of a sponsorship deal. The Land Rover Defender is also used by military forces mainly in countries within the British Commonwealth. In the UK armed forces the very expensive Pinzgauer, now built in the UK, is increasingly common in roles previously the preserve of the Land Rover Defender such as ambulances, artillery tractor and weapons platform.

Since the 1970s in most remote areas of Africa, South America, Asia and in the Australian Outback the Toyota Land Cruiser has overtaken the Land Rover as the utility 4x4 of choice, probably because of the superior durability and build quality of the Land Cruiser.

Company timeline

• 1948 Land Rover is designed by the Wilkes Brothers and is manufactured by the Rover Company
• 1967 Rover becomes part of Leyland Motors Ltd, later British Leyland
• 1970 Introduction of the Range Rover
• 1975 BL collapses and is nationalised, publication of the Ryder Report recommends that Land Rover be split from Rover and be treated as a separate company within BL
• 1980 Rover car production ends at Solihull, which is now exclusively for Land Rover manufacture. 5-door Range Rover introduced.
• 1986 BL, now known as the Rover Group, is privatised and becomes part of British Aerospace
• 1987 Range Rover is introduced to the U.S market
• 1989 Introduction of the Discovery
• 1994 Rover Group is taken over by BMW. Introduction of second-generation Range Rover.
• 1998 Introduction of the Freelander
• 2000 BMW breaks up the Rover Group and sells Land Rover to Ford.
• 2002 Introduction of third-generation Range Rover
• 2005 Introduction of the third-generation Discovery/LR3
• 2005 Adoption of the Jaguar AJ-V8 engine to replace the BMW M62 V8 in the Range Rover

Models

• Series/Defender - The original utilitarian truck
• Freelander - New compact vehicle
• Discovery/LR3 - Mid-size luxury SUV
• Range Rover - Top-line luxury SUV
• Range Rover Sport - On-road performance SUV

At the 2004 North American International Auto Show, Land Rover introduced its first concept, the Range Stormer (Gritzinger, 2004).

Abilities

The use of Land Rovers by the UK and Commonwealth military as well as on long term civilian projects and expeditions is mainly due to the superior off-road performance of the marque. For example the Land Rover Defender is capable of tackling a gradient of 45 degrees, an approach angle of up to 50 degrees, a departure angle of 53 degrees and a ramp break-over of up to 155 degrees - greatly superior not just to urban SUVs but to military vehicles such as the HMMWV and Pinzgauer.

Safety

Road accident statistics on a model-by-model basis from the UK Department of Transport show that the Land Rover Defender and Land Rover Discovery are the safest cars on the UK roads (measured in terms of chance of death in an accident) - between three times safer than the safest Volvo models, twice as safe (half the death-rate per accident) compared with the Jeep Cherokee and Toyota Land Cruiser and only matched by the Mercedes S Class and Jaguar XJ.

Quality problems

Recently the Land Rover marque has built a somewhat negative reputation for poor reliability and build quality problems and this is reflected in its showing in various industry quality and dependability related surveys including:

• US JD Powers and Associates vehicle dependability survey for 2003 published 8th July 2003 places the Land Rover marque second to last. The 2003 JD Powers Vehicle Dependability study is based on responses from more than 55,000 US based original owners of 2000 model year cars and light trucks at three years of ownership [1] (http://www.jdpa.com/pdf/2003050.pdf)
• Land Rover Discovery 6th from Bottom of 100 models for reliability in Auto Express 2002 survey in the UK.
• Joint 16th from Bottom in 144 car 2002 JD Powers UK based ‘What Car?’ magazine Customer Satisfaction survey
• Landrover had joint highest average cost in warranty claims for cars up to 10 years old in 2002 UK Warranty Direct index – no subjectivity here whatsoever these data are based on full maintenance leasing claims.
• Land Rover Discovery was Joint second bottom in 2002 UK Which magazine reliability survey of cars up to 2 years old- however only 35 cars in the Land Rover sample.
• Land Rover 3rd least reliable of 31 makes of car in 2002 UK 'Which?' magazine reliability survey cars 2000 - 2002
• least reliable of 32 makes built 1997 - 1999. Spate of engine power, gearbox and exploding clutch problems which LandRover will not repair under warranty
• Only 89% breakdown free in 2003 UK ‘Which?’ magazine JD Powers survey

Beginning with the LR3, one of the replacement power plants for the new model will be a 4.2 L V8 engine developed by Jaguar; also now part of the Ford group.

Some of the service problems in US specification Land Rover Defender and Discovery models are related to an obsolete petrol engine produced under license by Land Rover, the US specification Discovery's and Defender's petrol engine was designed in the late 1950s by General Motors for Buick. The same engine has powered a variety of other British cars, including the Rover 3500 and Triumph TR8.

Most European, South African and Australian specification Defenders and Discovery models are now equipped with the TD5 diesel engine and reliability has still proven a problem as detailed in the surveys above.

It now seems as if Ford is attempting to seriously address the Land Rover quality issues. It was reported in the Birmingham Post on 27th May 2004 that Ford’s senior management have given the Land Rover plant 8 weeks to come up with a "road map" to address the quality issues at Land Rover and bring its competitiveness up to global standards in 5 years. Land Rover's chief executive described this as "crunch time" for Land Rover.

External links

• Land Rover Official website (http://www.landrover.com/)
• Roverweb Land Rover Club (http://www.off-road.com/RoverWeb/)
• Internet Land Rover Club (http://www.landroverclub.net/)
• The Land-Rover FAQ (http://www.fourfold.org/LR_FAQ/)
• CalVIN, the free on-line Land Rover VIN CALculator (http://www.clifton.nl/calvin.html)

References

• Land Rover VIN codes
• Gritzinger, B. (2004, January 19). And baby makes four: Range Stormer conceives sporty side of Land Rover. In News. AutoWeek, 54, 4.

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