Kevin Isemonger reports from the Land Rover 75th anniversary
The history: in 1947, two brothers, Maurice Wilks – the Chief Engineer at the Rover Car Company, and his brother Spencer Wilks, Managing Director of the Rover car Company had a conversation, with Spencer asking Maurice what he was going to do when his WW2 Jeep died. It was being used as the primary workhorse around the family farm at Anglesey on the northwest coast of Wales.
“Buy another one – there’s nothing else.”
Steel was in short supply following the war and could only be attained for vehicles for the Export market. This ‘need’ spawned an idea first sketched out in the sand on the beach at Anglesey for the Rover Car company to manufacture a multi-purpose agrarian vehicle that could compete with the Ferguson tractor but could be driven into town. A Rover for the land.
They cobbled together a prototype from Jeep and Rover P3 car parts to present to the Rover Board. Approval was given on 4 September 1947 to build 25 prototypes – which was later extended to 50. The first Land Rover went on display at the Amsterdam Motor show on 30 April 1948 – less than a year after the sketch in the sand. The Land Rover was only to be a ‘stop-gap’ until steel was plentiful again, but Rover car production never exceeded that of Land Rover.
Ten years later, a meeting was called in the Kelso Hall in Southland in 1958 to discuss the concern of old tractors being collected and removed from the district. From this meeting the West Otago Vintage Club was started. To celebrate their 60th year, a few of the boys (Kevin Capel, Allan Dippie and Robert Duncan) decided to organise a really big ‘crank-up’ at Allans place at Three Parks in Wanaka over Easter 2019, which they called ‘Wheels at Wanaka’ – as opposed to ‘Wings over Wanaka’ on the alternate years.
In 2018 the Canterbury Rover Car Club hosted the Land Rover 70th birthday in Methven alongside the regional Rover rally - with well over 200 Land Rovers in attendance.
Inspired by the 2018 Methven event, a Wanaka Land Rover enthusiast Rod Corbett thought it would be great to host the 75th Land Rover birthday celebration as it aligned perfectly with the third bi-annual ‘Wheels at Wanaka’ event over Easter in 2023. A little Land Rover called ‘Oxford’ arrived in New Zealand in 2021. Rod decided it was too good an opportunity to miss and organised the ‘Oxford Land Rover rally’ at ‘WaW’ in 2021 with three days of off-road safaris exploring the mountains and valleys surrounding Wanaka with a Land Rover display and parades at WaW over Easter showcasing Oxford.
The format for this year’s event was similar to the Oxford rally with a series of three safaris on the days preceding WaW on the Saturday of Easter. Rod Corbett decided for the 75th that the safaris would be graded to long and short runs, which referred to the distance covered – not the duration, with the long runs better suited for the later models and the short runs aimed at the ‘Series’ Land Rovers.
On our way, we took a look up the Macauley river at the northwest corner of Lake Tekapo, so equipped with tea and sandwiches we headed up the Lillybank Road out of Tekapo. The road was easy and well graded until we reached the banks of the Macauley. We pressed out across the kilometre wide braided river which was hardly hub depth before turning north up the true-right of the Macauley.
We went up the Macauley for a few kilometres following the obvious track, which to this point had accurately followed the dashed lines on the map of my tracker until we came to a metre high drop-off into quite a deep crossing. A few large boulders necessitated some careful track alignment as well as current flow to ensure a successful egress on the other side. The crossing was quite deep and swift as the Defender clawed its way out on the far bank following some accelerated wheels spinning. The vehicle is well equipped with a 50mm lift, raised air intake, traction control and a set of 33x12.5x15 BFG Mud tyres on the back.
We continued up the valley heading to Macauley hut. We strayed off the plotted lines at one point but spied an orange waratah post on the far bank to get us back on track. It was obvious they had had some significant rain of recent months, as there was little evidence that other vehicles had travelled up the river.
Following another deep crossing (with ‘Driver-Assist’ still running in silent mode) and a tight left turn up a steep shingle bank, a low moan could be heard coming from the rear of the vehicle. We had popped a rear coil out of the top of the chassis mount and the spring was jammed between the chassis and the tyre. Several attempts to recreate the ‘cross- axle’ to reduce the load on the spring failed. I finally backed the vehicles left rear off a higher bank, but still the spring was solidly wedged. I then marked the location on the gravel and dug a 500mm hole at the marked point into the riverbed and tipped the left rear back into the hole – and with the aid of a large set-spanner and a size 10 boot, convinced the spring to ‘get in behind’.
We decided to call it a day and headed back out to Tekapo where we caught up with Allen Hosking and Rob Neal in Allen’s new Defender and arranged to convoy through to Wanaka the next morning.
