<\/p>\n
The Land Rover has a wonderful legacy.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 The Land Rover story began in 1948 as a basic utility vehicle for farmers, delivery companies and the military.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Used by the British Army, and the armed forces of many countries,\u00c2\u00a0 the Land Rover later became synonomous with expedition travel, particularly in Africa.\u00c2\u00a0 More Land Rovers have been used to cross Africa than any other vehicle. \u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 For years Land Rovers were a vehicle of choice for overlanders, for reasons related to payload capacity, space efficiency, off-road ability and toughness,\u00c2\u00a0 availability of spare parts, simplicity of design and fuel economy.\u00c2\u00a0 We later took a test spin in South Africa (December 2010 – see separate post) impressed upon us how functional the Defender is.<\/p>\n
The appeal of Land Rovers is not universal, they also have their detractors who emphasize that they are unreliable, uncomfortable,\u00c2\u00a0 and noisy.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 They have now been greatly displaced by Japanese vehicles like the Toyota\u00c2\u00a0 Land Cruiser or Nissan Patrol, but the Land Rover retains an almost mythical appeal among overlanders.\u00c2\u00a0 One catchphrase I saw on one club site typifies the less than completely rationale commitment to the product:\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Land Rovers do not leak they are just marking their territory\u00e2\u20ac\u009d, or “Land Rovers are always sick but never dead”<\/p>\n
There is a vast network of Land Rover Clubs around the world, full of people who are prepared to tolerate the drawbacks in exchange for the functionality.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Land Rover has a wonderful legacy.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 The Land Rover story began in 1948 as a basic utility vehicle for farmers, delivery companies and the military.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Used by the British Army, and the armed forces of many countries,\u00c2\u00a0 the Land Rover later became synonomous with expedition travel, particularly in Africa.\u00c2\u00a0 More Land Rovers have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[16,25,13,24,14,15,22,23],"class_list":["post-48","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-planning","tag-4x4","tag-africa","tag-defender","tag-expedition","tag-land-rover","tag-overland","tag-overlanding","tag-wheatcroft","no-thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.overlandrover-westafrica.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.overlandrover-westafrica.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.overlandrover-westafrica.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.overlandrover-westafrica.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.overlandrover-westafrica.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=48"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.overlandrover-westafrica.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.overlandrover-westafrica.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=48"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.overlandrover-westafrica.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=48"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.overlandrover-westafrica.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=48"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}