If you look you might find that Santana have been building Landies for almost as long as Land Rover have themselves.
OMFG - please tell me you didn't really type that dribble.
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Iran, just like Santana in Spain, PMC in Enfield NSW and Port Elizabeth in South Africa were the major Land Rover CKD assembly and manufacturing plants.
This is likely just a development of that production, probably when Jaguar Rover decided to remove production from them just like they did to JRA out at Moorebank. Except the Iranians did something about it rather than just sitting back and accepting the fact!
Looks like they are actually improving the designs instead of going backwards like the P38a diff.
Massif? No you can't. I even phoned the National Sales Manager at Iveco to ask why not, his answer was that they are only concentrating on the large trucks and a few Daily vans. There are no plans to sell the Massif in NZ.
If I had the chance I'd be in like Flynn.
About the Iranian stuff. Never seen those here, but they do look interesting.
Edit: PS. Don't be confused by the All Blacks advertising. There were two brought to NZ for the promotional shots a few years ago. They were then shipped back again.
PPS. I remembered one of the reasons. I think there are no RHD Massif's, but I could be wrong.
I could be wrong here, but I believe that the Series 3 design was sold to Santana and then development continued to form the base of the PS10 and then Massif. Santana then sold the Series III design to Morottab who developed it in a different direction, possibly with inspiration from a Defender but the main reason it looks so much like a Defender is it is based on a licensed Series III design. I think it would be pretty hard to sue anyone for design breaches over a coil-sprung version of a 1958 vehicle design. The best Land Rover could do would be to keep them out of developed markets, which they seem to have done.
Santana were a factory producing Land Rover under licence. They produced a 6cyl engine based on the Land Rover 2 1/4 litre engine and the 110/County models sold throughout the world were using a 5 speed gearbox designed and built by Santana (LT85). They also produce an LT230 built under licence with selectable 2/4WD in place of the centre diff. You can even use the Santana selectable drive system in your Defender LT230.
Remember we were pressing panels from the 1960's and right through to the 110's. PMC/JRA were also using locally produced mechanical components like Rover diffs produced by Borg-Warner and axles by DuFor and dare I say it Isuzu supplied engines. JRA Moorebank were tooled up to build the coil sprung 110 when production ended in the late 1980's, it is likely that Iran was similarly tooled up.
It is a small step to migrate to alternative (even more reliable) power plants than the Tdi series of Land-Rover items and manufacturing licenced (even unlicenced) copies of transmissions similarly not a problem.
You can see a Dana type front diff and the rear diff appears central so perhaps they are using a Dana Jeep transmission as well.
HAHAHA! I knew I'd elicit some sort of response like that. In fact, of all the Middle Eastern people, the Iranians (or Persians as the ones I've met like to be called) are the most likeable and inoffensive. It's only "Ahm a dinner jacket" and the revolutionary guard that are militants from what I've read. I really was just having a joke. Hey, why don't we start building them here, but fix up all the faults? Who's up for starting an Australian company building a faultless Defender that runs on the smell of an oily rag and is a mechanical leap ahead of the current one?
guess only problem would be that none of those more desirable engines would met our emissions regulations and so are cut out of our market
Friend wanted to bring near new tdi (2001) build (found in holland ) no chance as not emissions 4 regulation engine !!!
Mmm don't know how that was as my 95 tdi came into Aus in 2005 and was not tested for emissions. No body even looked at the engine
I was told it goes on the year it was made regs and not the year you import it so a 1971 diesel Landy would still be able to be imported into Aus today as it would have to meet the Aus 1971 regs and not the regs of today
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