Small but perfectly

Legacy Overland is known for its restified Range Rovers, Land Cruisers and G-Wagens. As this Suzuki LJ demonstrates, there’s literally no end to the range of classic 4x4s the US outfit is capable of bringing back to life in a manner that far exceeds anything their original manufacturers ever envisioned

Words: Graham Scott Pictures: Legacy Overland

Back when the planet was in its initial cooling phase, I used to work on 4x4 magazines. This was at a time when the pesky Japanese were administering a drubbing to ‘proper’ 4x4s from the UK and the US. This wasn’t universally popular. And every now and then we on the magazine would drop the ball.

We’d let the word ‘Jeep’ go through attached to something else. Sometimes the capital letter didn’t make it either. Probably in the letters page someone would mention a ‘Vitara jeep’ and we’d miss it. But not for long. Because in an opulent room somewhere various lawyers, kept in luxury for the express purpose, would get their heads out of the gilded trough and start squealing and snorting and stampeding in our direction with various legal letters and threats.

I think Hoover used to employ a similar herd of lawyers kept in clean straw at all times, but frankly we didn’t trouble them so much. But our trottered legal friends at Jeep were adamant. Apologies, retractions and explanations and a fresh bucket of caviar for their trough.

I was reminded of those happy days while munching a bacon sandwich and looking at the photos of this little beauty. Somehow they’ve managed to make a Suzuki LJ80 look more like a Jeep than a Jeep. But, just to forestall any Gadarene clattering of trotters down the corridor, this is definitely not a Jeep. It’s a Suzuki.

The ‘they’ referred to above is Legacy Overland, based indeed in the land of the Jeep. As you probably know, their thing is to find some beaten-down old-timer and restore it. Although that’s not the right word. Possibly there isn’t a verb for when you restore, rebuild, repurpose re-whatever a vehicle so far from its knackered state that it’s infinitely better than when it came out of the factory.

I mean, just look at it. It looks almost a perfect square from some angles, a small, bluff Tonka toy of a 4x4, suitable for adventure anywhere. Oh, what’s that sound? Right, this isn’t anything to do with Tonka toys we’d like to point out. Or Jeep. It’s all Suzuki out of Japan courtesy of Legacy Overland out of the US.

Suzuki got it pretty right from the get-go when they launched the LJ80. In fact the first