5 minute read
Alan Kidd Great engineering is a constant in the off-road world
Alan Kidd Editor
There’s an article in this issue of 4x4 about a rare old Land Rover 90 that’s just been restored, and modifi ed a little, into a modern interpretation of a timeless classic. The owner decided to slam it by an inch rather than doing what I’d have done and taking its suspension the other way, but it’s no less of a masterpiece for all that.
For me personally, though, seeing it was a little reminder of how old I’ve got. Back when I was starting out in this game, one of the fi rst news stories I covered was Land Rover launching this fancy new version of the Defender with nice paint, alloys and so on. And now, that same vehicle is a rare old classic that’s getting restored. Hey ho.
It’s not as old as the Half-Track Fox, though. An extraordinary snowmobile based on an early Volkswagen T1 van, this too has just been restored (and again the results are to be found in these pages), but this time it dates from before I was born.
The builder, an Austrian by the name of Kurt Kretzner, spent years turning a T1 into a vehicle that could be driven up mountains in the middle of winter. It turned out not to be a commercial success, so today it’s no more than a unique curiosity. But it’s also a tribute to the skill and imagination of the sort of engineers who continue to make the off-road scene what it is.
Just look at the last few issues of this magazine. We’ve covered a guy who built his own fun buggy out of a rusty Discovery. A guy who created a whole new car brand because the fl eet of Series III work trucks he was trying to maintain kept falling to bits. A vehicle built from parts lying around the yard which, more than 20 years later, has just won its class for the third time in one of Africa’s toughest off-road events. A guy who carried out his own 6x6 conversion. A concept Jeep built as a tribute to those down-home engineers who bobtail their trucks to make them better in the rough. And so on.
More than anything else, if the 4x4 scene is about anything (other than the vehicles and the things you can do in them, of course), it’s about engineering. Times have changed a lot since I was that young reporter knocking out a story about the blingy new Defender 90 SV (it was all transfer levers and live axles back then, but the march of the independent wishbone has been relentless and, in particular, what was once analogue has become ever more digital), but one constant has been the brilliance of the independent engineers whose work has yielded so many great machines. Another of my earliest jobs was to report on a new TVR-engined racer built by comp safari legend Tim Marsh – that was coming on for 30 years ago, and the top of the off-road engineering game had been operating at that standard for many years even then.
During that time, new vehicles have been getting more and more complicated and a constant moan I’ve heard from people has been ‘no-one’s going to be cutting those up and off-roading them in 15 years’ time.’ The P38 Range Rover was a classic case of this.
What this shows is that within the offroad world, people tend not to believe that the engineering standards of the day will be able to evolve at the same pace as what the manufacturers are putting out. As it turns out, the P38 now looks pretty old-school and people have long since been cutting them up. The electronics are horrible, but the vehicle itself now looks pretty basic.
When it comes to electronics, though, it’s probably fair to say that no-one expected the independents to be able to bring EV technology into the off-road world. Yet the number of conversions for old-shape Defenders is spiralling upwards.
I’m not sure I would want to mess with my own 90 in that way, at least not yet. But my respect for engineering that’s gone into these vehicles knows no bounds. Maybe there’s a young car hack somewhere who’s just done a story for his website about Electrogenic’s new EV conversion for agricultural Defenders (also in this issue), and he’s no idea that in 30 years’ time, he’ll be seeing one of those old trucks getting restored and looking back fondly at the engineering of old. His website probably won’t still exist – but the vehicles will.
Brilliant engineering is a constant in the 4x4 scene
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Editor
Alan Kidd
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