Video: Top Gear Tribute to Land Rover - Truly Great Cars!

From Top Gear, BBC World: a tribute to the greatest car in the world. The original Land Rover.

There are no fins and no spoilers. It doesn't swoop, curve, or look like its going fast when its powered. It never looks like its going fast. It doesn't go fast.

It doesn't cosset your behind with the skin of a rare animal. It doesn't cool your face with the soft breeze issued from a walnut dash. It's wheels are not magnesium.

But I'm not asking you to go out and buy one or to put a poster of one on your wall. We're talking about great cars and that's not the same thing as desirable cars.

So let's get down to the greatness of the Land Rover. For starters, it is totally and utterly classless. It tells the world nothing about your wallet, your aspirations, your success, or your abilities in the bedroom. In a Land Rover you can work the land or you can own the land. Drafty old collie carrier it may be, but kings, prime ministers, toffs, shepherds, and solicitors can all climb out of a Land Rover and look proper.

The Series 1 Land Rover was launched in 1948 with permanent four-wheel drive and the capacity to work as a car, a tractor, a generator, a welder, and a fire pump.

Its body was hand built using aluminum leftover from the war effort. It's light green paint was a hand me down from fighter plane builders. But they got it right. Its separate chassis and bolt-on body construction is still used in today's Defender. It wasn't broke so they never fixed it even after 55 years of production and 1.8 million cars. And people appreciated it so they kept them going. Incredibly - 70% of all the Land Rovers built are still on the go today. 70%! Compare that to the VW Beetle - over 27 million were built - can you imagine 70% of them still cluttering up the roads today? There time has gone. The Beetle did nothing except exist in large numbers, but the Land Rover was a groundbreaker. Along the way it spawned the Range Rover and in doing so it created a whole new type of car - the sport utility vehicle.

So its classless, its clever, and its virtually indestructible and its got some pretty impressive offspring. But here's the nub of it - the reason why this is a great car - the great car - Land Rovers only do important things. It's part of the fabric of life - in town and country - and probably every day of your life either to be seen or be near one. It's taken pregnant mothers through snowstorms to hospitals, carried rescuers up remote mountains, and supported the livelihoods of millions of families.

Whilst others pose, preen, and cruise, the Land Rover has contributed directly to all of our lives thru peace time and war. Its crossed deserts to deliver food to starving peoples, explored inaccessible terrritories to help map the world, built telecommunications networks, brought law and order to hostile places, and help preserve the rarest of animals from extinction. It's been claimed that the first car seen by 60% of the developing world's population is a Land Rover.

I defy you to find one way in which it fails to measure up - to be what its supposed to be and to do what its supposed to do. And its beautiful - truly beautiful - in the way that the weather beaten care-worn face of a desert nomad might be beautiful.

It needs a Knighthood and a statue, but I'll tell you whatever happens - if its heaped with glory or ignored - it will make no difference.

A Land Rover would never turn up to collect an Oscar, it would be far too busy doing something important, somewhere, for someone.