By Denise McCluggage
As a rally driver for the Rover factory in the early 60s (3-liter Rover sedan) I met the man who created the first Land Rover. At dinner one night he told the story of how they took some GI Jeep discards, lengthened the wheel base and built the prototype.

Time masks his name, but memory and imagination plays back bright star bursts from a cutting tool chopping the frame of an olive drab Jeep some departing Yank left in a Sussex lane before dashing home to a rusted basketball hoop on an Indiana barn. I see the Brits welding in a length of steel, standing back and saying: “That looks about right.”