Thread: Oz made Series LRs ?

Originally Posted by Jordan

My 2A seems to be made in Australia, going by the oval body badges.
Just curious, which other models were made here rather than imported?
Are there any significant differences?
How much of it was locally made, rather than assembled from imported parts?

Do you mean the pressed metal corp badges? Or just standard LR badges with "Australia" at the bottom. AFAIK the latter just indicates they were assembled in Australia.

John says it succinctly. Further expansion on that in the link attached.

Originally Posted by JDNSW

Starting with the Series 1 from about 1950 they were assembled by the Pressed Metal Corporation, and later Rover Australia, which merged into Leyland Australia, then JRA. I don't believe any have been assembled locally since the late eighties. From the mid fifties at least there was significant local content, although it varied with the model - for example, most station wagons were fully imported. Substantial local design went into some models as well, particularly the military ones.

John

http://www.aulro.com/afvb/general-ch...landys-oz.html

Here's some pics of the badges on my S2A.

Hello from Brisbane.

The experts may have a more definitive answer, but I believe there was some Australian manufactured content in various Series models - the 2As and 3s at least. Government protection policy pretty much mandated this.

Examples might include tyres, wheel rims, some brake components, seats, shock absorbers, hoses, seat belts, windscreen washers, and heaters (S3 anyway), grille panels (S2A from around 1967), paint etc. Perhaps more.

Otherwise, they used a lot of original UK bits and don't differ much from the UK vehicles.

Cheers

The amount of Australian manufactured components increased over time, and included at least some panels, as well as wheels. Military chassis were modified or even manufactured here, from 2A onwards. No engines, gearboxes or diffs were made locally, but quite a lot of other smaller bits were, including electrics. Tax changes were designed to force importers to manufacture locally, with increasing local content (and you can get very high local content without making major components since it is by $, and assembly is a major input.

Some models are different in Australia or unique to Australia, notably the Series military models that have many differences from the equivalent home market model, the Isuzu engined Stage 1s, and (although not Series) the Perentie Project 110s and equivalent civilian 4x4s and 6x6s.

Changes made to home market models often did not occur at the same time locally, usually happening later. And there were differences between home market and export CKD versions, usually in equipment details. Further differences show up in that common options tend to be different - for example, in Australia trayback utes largely replaced tub type bodies as early as the Series 2a here. Some "option packs" such as the Game are probably sufficiently different to be considered a unique Australian model.

Hope this helps,

John

All quite interesting.
Thanks folks.