Land Rover is the name that was given to the first AWD model, the forerunner of off-road vehicles for civil and military uses, produced by Rover, the time-honoured British car manufacturer. Unveiled in Amsterdam on 30 April 1948, the celebrated model was produced for many years in countless versions. When British Leyland, the car maker that had acquired the Rover marque in 1967, was nationalised in 1975, the name became that of an independent automobile manufacturer.
Further vicissitudes in the years that followed saw different owners take over the Land Rover along with the group it belonged to: first BMW, then the Ford Group and eventually, in 2007, Indian automobile company Tata Motors.
The first Land Rover was designed by Maurice Wilks in England in 1947. It seems that during a family outing to the Red Wharf Bay (on the island of Anglesey, in Great Britain), while he was telling his brother about his idea for a new vehicle that could go anywhere and do anything, Wilks leaned over to draw an outline of the car body in the sand to better illustrate his words.
That was the first sketch of the celebrated car, conceived as a multipurpose vehicle, for farmers, for the countryside, for industrial uses. This year (2015), six Land Rovers drawing harrows drew the same outline (this time extending over 1 km) in the same sand of the same beach to celebrate the birth of the idea. Indubitably, Wilks drew his inspiration from the Jeeps used by US soldiers during WW2. The first model, in fact, was built on a Jeep frame and from the early years, on account of its sturdiness and straightforward construction, the Land Rover was adopted by the military forces, alongside the Austin Champs.
In the 1970s, the brand launched the first ever luxury off-road vehicle: the Range Rover, still in production 45 years on, and currently viewed as the only off-road SUV that can tackle any surface and go from mud to motorway with nonchalance. At the same time, the company began to face competition from Japanese car makers, and precisely from the Toyota Land Cruiser and the Mitsubishi Pajero. The Range Rover proved a great success and was also proposed in sports versions to meet the requirements of affluent customers.
Land Rover produced in the past, and continues to produce, numerous military vehicles used by armies the world over. Among the best known and most popular models we should mention the Wolf, celebrated for its agility, and the Land Rover 101 Forward Control, used to pull heavy materials.
At present (2015), the model range includes the Range Rover, the Range Rover Sport and the Range Rover Epoque, as well as the Freelander and the Discovery.
