Thread: I think I want a II/IIA. Don't I?

Been watching this rolling debate as it has evolved and might offer some fatherly advice.... Feel free to ignore it, my own kids do.

Finding the old Land Rover of your dreams is a bit like teenage love for a lot of people. Starts out with some ideal, and out of the blue something eventually turns up which may or may not have some sort of resemblance to the original ideal. By that stage it usually becomes a case of "who cares".

You may initially want a 1968 2A SWB for all of the reasons in your original post, and who is to know what you finally end up with. In reality it could well be a S2A, or a S3 or a 1950 S1 80" - one day something will pop up and you may well make a choice to go for it. In my case I started looking for a S2, nearly bought a S1 80" and ended up with a S3 88" which I am more than happy with. Can't say that I really notice the "sea of plastic" that is meant to debase the appeal of S3s, but I sure appreciate the lack of rust and dings in this particular truck which had a greater bearing on the final decision than maybe the position of the headlights.

If you read a lot of the UK magazines etc it would be easy to get quite fussy on a particular model because there appears to be heaps of S1s, S2s etc on offer. Here across the great water the simple facts are that the pool of genuine restorables on offer at any time is pretty small, especially SWB models that have not been butchered or belted from pillar to post around a farm with limited maintenance. So, despite searching near and far it would be unusual if not extremely lucky to stumble across the exact model that you might have in mind - especially in the sort of conditon that you might be hoping for given that the last S2s rolled off the line here in Australia about 40 years ago. On the other hand you may see something else in the mean time that starts ringing the right bells.

I believe that once you have made the commitment to proceed, the rest usually falls into place.

Cheers,

Originally Posted by chazza

I would suggest that it reflects the design commonality of so many English cars prior to about 1953, when placing the instruments in the centre of the dash was more usual than unusual - think of Morris Minor; Six and Wolseley; Austin; Jaguar; Rover cars; Model T Ford; etc. way back to the early years of motoring.

When the S1 was designed, most cars had the instruments there - I doubt "an agricultural aspect" was in the design-brief,

Cheers Charlie

....Actually......there was another reason for that......it was so ya missus could see what speed you were doing and give ya an earfull.