Thread: Land Rovers during the Snowy Scheme

A lot of people might be thinking of the 70s Land Rover shortages and mixing it up with earlier times. Industrial action in British factories was a cause for much of these delays and reading 1970s magazines is as much the cause of Land Rover losing market share as anything else.

Jeff

Originally Posted by Discofever

I was told this about 20 years from my Subi mechanic who used to do some work on an old Brumby I had in the early 90s. He was a bit of an automotive historian so I didn't question it. He also stated that he used to work for Land Rover. I was quite young and probably naive to such things and I must admit that when I was told I thought that Land Rover missed a massive opportunity (assuming he was right of course).

Land Rover missed numerous opportunities. Particularly when they were merged into the disasterous British Leyland Corp.

In the 1950s The Rover Co Ltd had Rover engineers embedded within the Polo Flat workshops of Grenville Motors and the SMHEA and many innovations were developed from there. In the late 1960s early 1970s with BLMC Land Rover stopped listening to consumer needs in Australia and like other marques in the BL conglomerate, they were all starved of funds. At the same time the various marques were not forced to rationalise major assemblies like engines so they could benefit from economies of scale. e.g. there were 998 cc 1100cc and 1275cc, 1500 cc and 1800cc BMC engine, 2500 and 3000cc V8 Triumph engines, 2000cc 2286cc, 2600cc, 3500cc V8 Rover engines as well as many others all in cars. They could have reduced this to half the number.

In 1970 Land Rover had all the design and tooling to build the coil sprung V8 county, this would have meant a single transmission facility and a single engine facility for all Range Rover and 109 Land Rover production. Both models could have shared a common front axle and the Land Rover 109 could have had the drum braked Salisbury these could have achieved significant economies of scale. Instead we were given the SIII at the same time that Toyota Landcruiser fitted the 4 speed and market share shifted from Land Rover being the market leader in Australia to Toyota taking market leader position in the 4WD class, something it has never relinquished.

There were most certainly shortages of Land Rover with the introduction of the 110. The PMC factory at Enfield NSW was tooled up to commence production of the 110, instead they closed the factory and Land Rover dealers were unable to get any vehicles to fil orders for over 12 months.

Originally Posted by PAT303

Remember too LR was being bled dry,all it's profits were being used to cover BL losses at the time so LR had nothing in the way of capital to make more vehicles or invest in a larger support net work.I'd like to know who and why they modded those LR's with the Blue Flame motor. Pat

What's a blue flame motor?

Originally Posted by Lotz-A-Landies

What's a blue flame motor?

A six cylinder Chev engine, very similar but larger than a Holden 'Grey' motor. The Holden version was developed from the Blue Flame.

That's the Blue Flame motor I know about, what I don't know about is a Land Rover blue flame motor.

Sorry,a bit of confusion,I was talking about the photo's of the series LR's that had lengthened chassis and fitted with what looks like BF motor in the Cooma grave yard. Pat

The irony is that, the Toyota six cylinder engine was a copy of the six cylinder Chevrolet engine which the Blue flame engine was developed from.

The catch with that photo I posted was, it has a PCV valve showing when the Chevrolet engine with that style rocker cover only had the sump breather pipe.

Just to complicate things, there is a Ford engine that has it's carby on the left hand side and painted the same colour blue as the previous photo, that was fitted to the fifties F100 pickup.


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I think the dizzy is too far forward on the Ford, more likely a red painted blue, maybe a reco or maybe to fool the rego authorities.

Jeff