Book Review: Land Rover Series One to Freelander by Graham Robson

Excellent book, entertaining read, but is very oriented to history.  If you are interested in Land Rover history, you will thoroughly enjoy this book.  If history is not your cup of tea, then pass.  I enjoyed it, and give it 4 stars.  Reviewers on Amazon.com did not like it as much, see below.

It does not cover the Range Rover; Crowood Press offers a separate book on the Range Rover.  Most of the pictures are black and white, with only a few color pictures in a center insert. There is an excellent index and an appendix.

Table of Contents

1 Rover's First 4x4: the Original Land Rovers

2 Series II and IIA (1958-71)

3 Series III (1971-85)

4 Ninety and One-Ten: Coil Springs, New Engines - a Thorough Update

5 Defender - and Still They Come

6 Discovery - With Thanks to the Range Rover

7 Discovery II: The Second Generation

8 Discovery 3: New from End to End

9 Freelander: New Structure, New Engines, New Thinking

10 Freelander 2: Another All-New Model

Appendix Oddities, Militaria and Specials

Index

From the back cover: 

Land Rover - Series One to Freelander covers nearly sixty years of Land Rover history.  From the very first Land Rover of 1948 to the most modern version, together with its stable-mates, the Discovery and the Freelander, Graham Robson's expert history tells the full story of these versatile machines.  Updated and expanded with full details on the second generation Freelander and third generation Discovery, this is a book for every enthusiast of these remarkable off-road vehicles.

- Full history of the Land Rover, Discovery, and Freelander

- Superb colour and black and white photographs

- Special feature panels on key personalities and developments

Introduction

I've been a dedicated follower of Land Rovers 4x4s for many years, and whenever I get the chance of more 4x4 experience, I enjoy it. It helps, of course, their live miles from a big city, so wherever I travel in the countryside I see these amazingly versatile machines hard at work.

Even so, times have changed enormously since I first wrote about Solihull's finest. In those days there were leaf-spring Land Rovers, but no other variety. Now, in the early 2000s, Solihull produces four completely different product lines, and the bush telegraph suggests that other, and more exciting products, maybe on the way.

There was, and always will be, a fascinating story to be told. So much, however, has happened at Solihull since 1948 that we do not quite see how we could squeeze a 'Complete Story' into one book! However, after Crowood's fine book about the Range Rover had been published, we realized that the story of Solihull's 4x4s could be completed by adding a new volume, and surveying all the other models that have accompanied it. It is still a large and impressive list.

This book, therefore, covers classic Land Rovers, Defenders, Discovery types and Freelanders, but not Range Rovers, and we think there's a great deal of logic in that. Range Rover, after all, is a marque all its own, while the others are Land Rovers of one type or a or another, and badged accordingly. It is a fascinating story covering more than fifty years, for a starts at a time of post-war shortages, and reaches the affluent 2000s. In the beginning, the factory could produce perhaps 10,000 4x4s a year, but by the early 2000s we had reached a time when annual Solihull production was approaching the 200,000 mark.

This, incidentally, is not just the nuts and bolts story, for the corporate history – who owned who, when and why – is also important. When the Land Rover was unveiled, the parent company was independent, but by the 2000s Land Rover was a subsidiary of Ford. Along the way there have been links with British Leyland, with the British government and with BMW: the miracle that his Land Rover's own character has never been lost.

If you are like me, there always seem to be an excuse for driving one of these cars. To celebrate his gap year, my son crossed the Sahara desert in a petrol-engined One-Ten. I was one of the first journalists to get a Discovery stuck in a narrow gateway in the West Country – and felt a fool. I even got a secretive MoD press officer to tell you what the forward control 101in model was really all about.

There has, also, that personal downside – like discovering that my garage door was not high enough to accept a Discovery, nor yet being able to persuade my wife if she needs a V6-engined Freelander more than the hot hatch but hatchback she loves so much: but I am working on that.