By Jeffrey B. Aronson

There are two famous sites in Kennebunkport, ME. One is the summer waterfront home of the Bush family; the second is the home of Leyland British Auto Repair. Recently I made the 3 hour drive to Kennebunkport and passed by the former to visit the latter. Erik Van Sickle has been restoring, repairing and maintaining British cars in his barn for decades. The shop always has an air of autojumble about it, but Erik knows where everything is located. He’s quite knowledgeable, highly skilled and reasonably priced. At least I thought so, until I saw the Range Rover Classic in his drive.

The decal across the rear window proudly announced his shop’s name. I walked around the gold colored four-door Range Rover. How could he afford a Range Rover? What would happen to the “reasonable prices?” Apparently nothing, for he bought the 100,000 mile Range Rover for $500 from a customer. It had some cosmetic rust and some wear of the upholstery and carpeting, but ran quite well. It needed nothing for daily use. The only annoyance was a buzzer trying to tell him something; a call to Rovers North uncovered that it was a warning buzzer alerting him to a poor engagement into high range at the transfer case. It took some wrestling to manhandle the never-used transfer case into low range, and then back to high range, but we did it and took care of the sound. That’s it – $500 and he has a Range Rover that he, his wife and daughters love to drive.

My most recent $500 purchase was a 1966 Corvair Monza Coupe. Unlike the $500 Range Rover it ran like a $500 car. Neither carburetor agreed with the other and the four-speed gearbox couldn’t seem to find any gear quickly. It smoked like a crop sprayer and knocked like a mad drummer. And the directional lever fell off in my hand. It took me hours of labor and $150 in parts to make it run. To get his Range Rover to run well it cost Erik a tank of gas.

Land Rover sent plenty of Range Rover Classics and Discovery Series Is to North America in the 80’s and 90’s, which means that there are plenty of entry-level priced Land Rovers out there. The Land Rover Classic Parts program, distributed through Rovers North, means that virtually anything you need to repair, restore or upgrade the Rover will be available. I’m still searching; if Erik can get lucky, so can I.

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Elsewhere in this issue Mike Koch writes of attending the very wet British Invasion event in Stowe, VT, last September. This year I resolved to return to the good graces of my Triumph TR-7 friends and attend in my ’80 Spider. The wet weather kept most of them away and made my Land Rover acquaintances wonder “where’s Jeff?” To Land Rover enthusiasts, you’re invisible if you don’t show up in a Rover. So I stared at the 400+ sports cars, saloons and Rovers in attendance and wandered through the muddy field – I should have brought the Rover! Missing my II-A I looked to see what would help me feel less lonesome. At the Rovers North booth I found a used early II-A facia panel with all the switchs, buttons and instruments. Calef Letorney somehow convinced me to purchase the Rovers North Magic Clay cleaning system kit. A Hi-Lift jack base looked essential to me, too.

Then I wandered into the huge vendor tent with a river running through the middle aisle. High and dry on one side was Liverpool Motor Works (LiverpoolMotorWorks.com), a PA company specializing in British car literature and paraphernalia. Neatly stacked in one pile was a 1974 British Leyland Land Rover Optional Equipment Parts Catalogue. Never mind that I don’t own a Series III – how could I do without this? Or the 1961 Rover Company Series II 2.25 Litre Diesel Engine Workshop Manual Supplement for the diesel I don’t own? Or the 1970 Land Rover Range Rover Options and Special Equipment dealer book (in English and German) for the sprayer and welder I don’t own? Or the mid 80’s Range Rover US dealer brochure that pictures twodoor Range Rovers never imported here [no Range Rover, either]? Wisely, I did purchase a Series II-A Optional Equipment for Land Rover booklet as I have two II-A’s. I managed to stammer “no” when presented with an original Series II tool roll [with tools] for a few hundred bucks. Later, when I confessed my financial lassitude with Mark Letorney, he let me know he had also looked at the tool roll and the books. That’s why they were piled up so conveniently!

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The weather has seemed weird this fall. It’s been t-shirt weather one day then near freezing that night, then damp and chilly for days on end. Photographers and artists will insist that colors really change under varying intensities of daylight. On a recent drizzly, morning, I sat beside my woodstove imbibing coffee and waiting for the burning wood to actually produce heat. I looked out the window at the QE I, my ’66 Series II-A. Against the autumn green of the wet grass, its Sage Green color seemed almost iridescent against the morning gloom. Considering that I last washed the car for the July 4th parade, it couldn’t be the paint finish alone. I focused on the fantastic lines created by David Bache in 1959 when he rounded off the edges of the Series I Rover to update the 10-year old design. Those barrel rolls on the front wings, doors and body tub look subtle now but they transformed the Land Rover into a style icon. Over the decades Land Rover has been a niche product in the US sales market. Since the 1950’s, each British pound has been worth $1.80 – $2.00. My 1966 Corvair, with accessories like a pushbutton AM radio, the 4-speed transmission, the 110 hp motor and floor mats, cost $2,275. A 1966 Series II-A station wagon listed at nearly $3,500, and that was “east of the Mississippi.” For that you got 77 horsepower, seats for 7, two windshield wipers and floor mats. With average incomes below $10,000 per year, that price differential mattered to consumers.

Rover accessories included “extra heavy duty springs and shocks, center power take off, tropical roof and flyscreens, reinforced front axle casing, manual engine speed control and spare wheel carrier on the hood.” Explorers, estate owners, farmers, and adventurers applauded. Corvair accessories included air conditioning [causing respiratory distress requiring tissues], a “deluxe swing-out mounted tissue dispenser” [three different styles], a litter container [for the used tissues, no doubt], radios [one with FM stereo sound!], a spare tire lock, and chillingly, a fire extinguisher. Suburban buyers were enthralled.

Land Rover had few color choices for its customers, an export problem shared with other British manufacturers. Wartime austerity did not fully release its grip on Great Britain until the early 1960’s, and automobile manufacturers had little extra room in their factories for additional paint booths. You could have your Land Rover in any color as long as it was a whiter shade of pale – sand, green or blue. Red was available for export markets only [like North America and Africa], and white or bronze green [the common color for all Series I’s] seemed destined for specialty vehicles only. In Great Britain, other exciting colors like soft grey and light white were available. No wonder US distributors and later, Rover North America executives, begged for more choices. Even the Corvair – the car General Motors sought to kill off – came in 15 different colors. What separated Land Rover was, of course, its remarkable engineering, design and construction, not its tissue dispensers and litter containers. The market for Land Rovers has shifted over the decades but the core values remain in place, whether you own a Series I or an LR3. Land Rovers are still in production. Tellingly, the last Corvair was made in 1969.

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The price of gasoline flirted with the $4.00 level on this island, then “fell” to $3.45 for most of the season. To paraphrase The Three Stooges, “inch by inch, step by step,” the cost of fuel for our Land Rovers marches upward into territories once occupied only by European nations. No wonder enthusiasts scream for the 30 mpg diesel engines enjoyed by British and Rest of the World enthusiasts. I would not venture to say which component of the price of fuel – crude oil suppliers, refiners, retailers, oil giants, federal/ state/local tax authorities – truly drives this year’s price increases, but it’s certainly having a ripple effect on other petroleum based products.

For example, have you bought tires recently? It does not seem that long ago that tires could be secured for the cost of a day’s labor. Unless I change my name to Donald Trump, those days are clearly gone.Recently I replaced the worn out tires on the QE I, my ’66 Series II-A 88” SW. I challenged the local garagiste to secure me a set of B.F. Goodrich All Terrain M+S.

It takes a certain steely-eyed verve to work as an auto mechanic. After all, in this day and age, you will deliver an estimate or an invoice to a customer far more likely to be in 4 figures than 3. Todd, the proprietor of “The Best Damned Garage on the Island [indeed, the only one],” is generally up to the task. However, as he gave me the quote, even he blanched for a moment. The number seemed staggering to me; in fact, the value of my II-A would jump nearly 20% when I factor in the tires! I gulped hard, dug into my savings, and bought them. They looked terrific on the car aided by an optical illusion that makes them look taller and narrower tan their dimensions would indicate. Using a hand measuring device [you can use a piece of chalk and a tape measure] and a pipe wrench, we aligned the front wheels so as to save premature wear on the new tires. Now I should be able to get another 40,000 miles on this set!

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With the Boston Red Sox in the World Series, I bought a Boston newspaper and wound up in the automotive section. Their auto writer had taken seven off road vehicles onto the Land Rover designed test course at Long Pond, PA, near Pocono Raceway. The motley collection included 4×4 pickups, a Jeep Wrangler Unlimited Rubicon, a Mercedes G55 AMG, and a Land Rover LR3. Saving the best for last he wrote “This is, quite simply, a monster wrapped in elegance. It features a 300-horsepower V-8, superb off road capabilities and a hill descent program that will not let it slop into a skid even on the slipperiest of slopes. Too bad so many of these cars only find their way to the Hamptons or Martha’s Vineyard or Nantucket.”

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