What do you think of when I say the word “4×4?” I think this designation has become slightly diluted over recent years, expanded to include anything with a slightly raised driving position and ground clearance just big enough to conquer one of those cushion speed bumps.
And where do you find these so-called off-roaders? Probably steamrolling down a countryside lane, or parked outside a school at pickup time, ready to collect their one child and head home via the busiest and narrowest street in town.
But it wasn’t always this way. When I see a Series One Landy, I imagine it poking through leafy rainforests and thick-bush trails, or traversing rugged hillsides. It was designed to get from A to B, when B was halfway up a mountain.
It’s easy to forget that 4x4s used to actually be pretty cool. The Series One seats seven without being the size of a building, has proper four-wheel drive, and presumably a fun little lever that connects to a low-range gearbox for when the going gets tough. Not entirely necessary for traversing the depths of a Cotswold town, but that’s beyond the point.
It even predated the mandatory use of indicators, hence this Series 1 having its front indicators bolted to the side of the A-pillar. Meanwhile, the body-on-frame chassis, upright windscreen and removable panels and roof will remind the owner that they are driving something designed to thrive off the road, not on it. And for those driving nearby, it quietly raises the question of whether all that extra weight, padding, and pedestrian protection on their modern soft roaders is really necessary.
There is a kind of honesty to it all. Nothing is there unless it has to be. The dash is not cluttered with screens or soft-touch plastics, just exposed metal and a few rugged knobs that could probably be operated with a gloved hand after wrestling a sheep. You do not sit in a Series 1 so much as perch on it, with a view out over the bonnet like you are captaining a small boat.
And yet, despite its agricultural roots, there is an undeniable charm to it. Maybe it is the proportions, or the way the panels do not quite line up, or the satisfying clunk of the doors. It feels mechanical, mechanical in the way things rarely are now. Time to go and see how much these go for. Probably more than I’d like to admit. Oh well.