Girlie Defender - 24 October 1993

Posted on 29 January 2016, the day the last Land Rover Defender rolled off the production line in Solihull,


Two stills are taken from a video of a half term visit with daughter Kate and son J to the Heritage Motor Museum as it was called then, at Gaydon. There were loads of Land Rovers in all sorts of shapes and colours. I think nowadays called the British Motor Museum.

We later took a trip around the 4x4 track in a 110 Defender, J somehow got the front passenger seat, a family got the three middle seat row and Kate & I as well as two others were squashed in the sideways facing, third row. Here a very short video of a few seconds of the ride which Kate admits frightened her.  Not sure if J enjoyed it up front or was very brave - he had grabbed the front passenger seat while Kate and I got thrown about in the back row.

I was raised on Land Rovers in Trinidad. It was the only vehicle my father had for several years and he needed it to get about in the "Bush" with his small troop of men to survey for his employer, Trinidad Petroleum Development Ltd later taken over by BP. I did get to spend the odd day out with them and I remember being comforted by his foreman sitting next to me on the 3 "seat" bench in the SWB version, the others clinging on in the back sitting on metal benches. He told me my father knew what he was doing as we descended down some muddy seemingly vertical hills.

At some point in the '60s, my mother got her driving licence and there followed a car to join the jeep as the Land Rover was called.

I'm not yet sure and need to try some research to find out but I think I probably had my first ever "car" journey in the Land Rover, from the clinic I was born, in Port of Spain to our house at the other end of the island at Palo Seco. A very bumpy ride back then and took several hours. Google maps shows the 88km journey takes 90 minutes and that 61 years after the event.