Classy 90 French Defender proves it’s not just fi ne wines that mature with age

NOT JUST YOUR AVERAGE SWAMP MONSTER

The Congaree National Park in South Carolina is a wild land of swamps and forests where, back in the day, European settlers feared to tread. This Land Rover Defender 90 is another kind of European settler in the United States – but having just been remanufactured from scratch by Legacy Overland, it’s not afraid to tread anywhere

Words: Graham Scott Pictures: Legacy Overland Background pic: Congaree National Park, by John Manard @ fl ickr.com, CC BY-SA 2.0

What’s in a name? You’re a company remaking – reimagining – old time classic 4x4s. You have a project Land Rover Defender 90 in for a major upgrade. As an American company, you’re looking for a name that references the USA as well as the UK. You go for Project Congaree.

That doesn’t mean much to a UK audience, but it’s the name of a national park down in South Carolina. So, great outdoors, national park, USA, boxes ticked. The Urban History Association obviously wasn’t consulted:

‘The history of Columbia, and of South Carolina more generally, would look markedly different if it were not for the existence of the Congaree Swamp, now a National Park. Being a home for Native Americans, a place of mystery for Europeans and a refuge for escaped slaves.’

Yup, that’s the vibe we’re looking for.

However, to be fair, the donor vehicle was a bit of swamp monster anyway. Actually, that’s not being fair. We’ve all seen 90s in worse nick than this one. But it was certainly tired. Or, to be precise, it was ‘fatigué’. Or ‘fatiguée’ if you see vehicles as being female. The previous owner was, and there’s no other way to put this, French.

Legacy Overland is based in Connecticut and has a mantra of making vehicles ‘new vintage classic’. That means complete projects, from sourcing the donor vehicle through the entire documented dismantling and rebuilding to a spec and quality that most manufacturers would fi nd alarming. We’re talking thousands of hours for every vehicle, whether it’s a Toyota Land Cruiser, Land Rover or Range Rover, G-Wagen or whatever, so long as it’s a classic model.

In this particular case the classic model that Legacy sourced was a 1990 Land Rover 200 Tdi – but a hard-top, which may come as a surprise as you look at the fi nished photos. However, not all of the vehicle was hard, as Monsieur Rouille had made a permanent home in the metalwork, gorging on the steel like Monsieur Creosote on a wafer-thin mint.

On the plus side, from the Americans’ point of view, the French drive on the same ridiculous side of the road as themselves, so that made life considerably easier. So, all they had to do was take

this tired old 90 apart and rebuild it. To a standard that would have made the original Solihull crew spill their tea and drop their bacon sandwiches, then go on strike because management expected them to pick them back up themselves.

Legacy make much of life in the slow lane, harking back to an analogue past rather than the frenetic digital present. They take their time, thousands of hours of it as we’ve already mentioned, and you get the sense that they do something then stand back and look at it a while, before nodding slowly in satisfaction and possibly readjusting their baseball cap. What’s the hurry?

After all, this old Land Rover had already been kicking around the planet for more than quarter of a century, so what difference did a bit more time make? They took the vehicle apart, literally, back to component parts. At this point many of us are hoping for a garage fi re or an urgent need to go abroad for a while, but the good ol’ boys at Legacy are made of a sterner gauge of steel.

The engine and fi ve-speed gearbox with transfer case were rebuilt and gained some remarkably bright and cheerful blue paint and silicon hoses as well as the ability to actually work properly and smoothly. Most of the rest of the mechanicals were rebuilt, replaced or repainted.

But of course, however painstaking the rebuild, at this point you’re simply doing a rebuild, albeit slowly and carefully. What owners of a Legacy Land Rover want is a 20th Century vehicle built for the 21st Century.

That’s where the detailing starts to matter. Every bracket, bolt, fastener, whatever was galvanised. The door hinges are stainless steel. The paint, Pangea green with black highlights, is thick and lustrous. At the front there’s a KBX facelift kit with black mesh, X-mark LED headlights and round LED lamps either side, which are matched by round LED lamps at the rear.

Below those rear lamps is a NAS-style bumper matched by a satin black front bumper with rubber caps. Front and rear are joined by black running steps for when, according to the photos, a woman wants to drive around in a satin evening gown. She’s obviously never been to Solihull.

Rounding off the outside are some gnarly Cooper Discoverer S/T Maxx tyres on some

Legacy Overland doesn’t spruce vehicles up – it remanufactures them completely from scratch. Hence a 200Tdi engine which, despite the miles in its block, is probably better than new. The chassis, suspension and axles all look the way they did when they left the factory, too – all the way down to the somewhat surprising retention of drum brakes on the back

seriously black alloy Sawtooth 16” rims. Behind them are a pair of disc brakes at the front backed up to a degree by drums on the rear. The tyres are 265/70R16s and ultimately it’s still a standard Tdi 90, so while upgrading to rear discs would be second nature to any off-roader it’s actually not necessary in this case. The spare remains in its original place on the rear door, and inside there’s a wooden Momo steering wheel attached to those front wheels.

All of this is of course jolly fi ne, but it’s when you sit behind that racy, stylish wheel that it all starts to really come to life, even if under the bonnet there is still just a 200 Tdi. The most obvious difference is the lavish application of tan leather pretty much everywhere, with black chevron inserts. They’re all made for the vehicle but, rest assured, no cows were hurt in the creation of this.

That’s because the interior is full of vegan leather, whatever that is. (Since cows eat grass, doesn’t that make them vegan?) Whatever, there’s a lot of it and the stitching looks top class. It covers pretty much anything that doesn’t moove, including the front bucket seats. They’re Porsche 911 style, with high headrests and substantial side support for when the off-roading gets radical.

Ahead of those seats and ahead of the Momo wheel are Legacy’s own custom-made white dials, adding further to that modern, sporty vibe, while behind them are two foldable benches with lap straps. This is obviously a very different rear to the original, with the soft-top conversion allowing all that positive sunshine in that the Americans are apparently so full of. For when that doesn’t suit the mood, there’s a powerful air-conditioning unit to keep the swamp outside.

So far so fairly analogue. But of course a modern classic has to also include some of the latest goodies as we hurtle through what is apparently the 21st Century. Our lady in the silk gown may sometimes be lost but, when she is, she doesn’t just dial up Google Maps or whatever. She gets out a proper paper map from the glovebox. Hmm, but it’s dark so what to do? Ah yes, use the map light, which is mounted on to a telescopic arm.

Obviously such a light would also help when you drop your bag of Parma Violets on the fi tted rubber fl oor mats or when you want to scare someone by underlighting your face as you overdose on sugar having scooped them back up, and you can’t do that with Google Maps so let’s hear it for analogue.

For maximum effect you’d need a decent soundtrack, perhaps Bach’s Toccata and Fugue or Nessun Dorma at full blast, or some classic Lubricated Goat, and that requires something that can handle some serious bass for when they really pull out the stops. Legacy have obviously thought of that. There’s an 800-watt subwoofer, enough to make any swamp vibrate enough to scare the alligators. A substantial amplifi er adds to the sound for the four big Pioneer speakers, in the front doors and in the rear.

There are plenty of other little touches, like Bluetooth and USB ports, showing the attention to detail and the thought that has gone into this ‘modern classic’. This 90 is a long way from the vehicle that rolled off the production line back in 1990. It’s also a long way from home. Made in England, lived in France and now remade in America for a new life in the New World.

Once upon a time it lived in the Bordeaux area of France. It would be a fascinating story to hear about its life and its journeys from one side of the Atlantic to the other. Perhaps that’s another one for the Urban History Association.