Thread: Military 109 wagon?

Originally Posted by Lotz-A-Landies

I think we are talking about a number of different things here.
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I completely agree and no subject is clear cut 100% black or white

My experiece with ckd in recent years has been as above, more of a scam or an exploitation of a loophole

With CKD being mentioned in the production of an aussie series II had me intrigued why as I would have thought bad in those days there would have been few trade restrctions between aus and the uk. I am guessing from your info on packing 6 per crate that originally it was done by "and 3over as the cheapest way to ship 6 vehicles.

With the range rovers later I guess it was to meet local content rules or trade restrictions.

Just an interesting subject when you look at the changes in rules. The national car of Malaysia is the Proton which was a Mitsubishi with a Proton badge. Naza is Kia, Perodua is Daihatsu, Hicom is Isuzu. The indonesian national car attempt, the Tommy Timur caused a trade row with the US and end with the 98 asia economic crisis (well their are a lot of other factors but the US were not impressed with a surcharge being added to US imports)

Originally Posted by fesm_ndt

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Again it would be very interesting to see why the early Land Rovers were CKD. ...

There were two basic reasons for this.

1. It reduced the import duty paid on imported vehicles. The Australian car manufacturing industry was highly protected pretty much from the end of WW2. In fact import of complete cars was totally banned in 1914, and while this was relaxed in 1919, there had grown up a substantial local industry, and protection was provided for body building operations such as Holden and CKD assembly plants such as Ford Australia, where a locally made body was fitted to a largely imported chassis. These had expanded substantially with war production during WW2, and it was politically desirable to protect them, culminating in the protected and subsidised Holden car in 1948.

2. It may be a bit hard to realise, but Rover was unable to meet demand for Landrovers from 1948 into the 1970s. (The first Landcruisers were brought in as a result of Les Theiss not being prepared to wear a six month wait on delivery. ) CKD vehicles did not have to go down the assembly line at Solihull, so Rover liked the idea as well - it meant that extra vehicles could be produced (the assembly line seems to have been the bottleneck - and once you have done everything to improve what you have got, the only solution is to either redesign the whole thing, or start a second line, presumably in a new factory. Neither was really possible for a small company like Rover).

John

Yes it is all historically interesting. In school we get taught something occured on a certain date, typically attributed to some cause

In reality often every event has many complex reasons behind it. I am aware of holden building bodies for chevy as way back as the 1920's but I wasn't aware we had trade restictions way back then. All very interesting, would be great to discuss over several beers

We better get this all back on topic of said series II. Buy it buy it. What is the price tag on it?

The series II firetruck up here the guy wants 3000 aud but often posted prices are inflated plus Land Rover has a cult status (especially price wise)