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Light-weight All-wheel Drive 2
One had become accustomed to building reasonably dignified mid-range motor cars, indeed, directly after the Second World War there were too few customers to be found. At the same time however, the production
capacities, at the expense of the government, had been enormously increased. Could one now take them over favourably?
This one did too, but faced the problem to fill the halls with production. Products were needed, which could really be sold. And the preferably as an export commodity, because only then the supply was secured with
raw materials. What could be more natural than to build machines, the can help the farmers, both on the field and on the way there or to markets.
In any case, the misery was great shortly after the war. The agriculture had to rationalize, in order to feed the from now on growing population. The company was owned by the brothers Spencer and Maurice Wilks, and
the latter had a farm in North Wales and there it became clear that such a vehicle was needed and at the same time on the market nothing really met the requirements, not even the meanwhile outdated Jeep.
In this situation, a relatively simple all-wheel drive was born, closely related to the Jeep as far as the drive train was concerned, but with a more matured coachwork. This was even made of aluminium and, as an
absolute speciality, had many parts which could be easily repaired because they were replaceable. Thus, the farmer had, apart from a very useful tractor, also a multi-purpose motor car, once again, the dreams of a
'Jack-of-all-trades' …
No, the Land Rover is not an exact copy of the Jeep. Apart from an in-house chassis, it was fitted with it's own mid-range engine and a type of permanent all-wheel drive, in this case, relatively simple with a permanent
connection to the front axle, however, it was complimented with a freewheel, which helped to reduce any possible tension between the front- and rear axle.
The production of the Land Rover began mid-1948, about 15 months after the first ideas. It had the 1600 engine of the P4 passenger car with its manual gearbox and additional shaft forward to the rigid axle. Its
platform consisted of aluminum sheets and also because oddly enough, it was more than steel on the market. The additional rust protection would certainly not harm the car with a preference for rough terrain.
It was favourable, but without doors and weather protection and as a commercial vehicle authorized for only half of the achievable speed of almost 100 km/h in the UK. The attempt failed to launch a closed station
wagon as a car with an additional 200 pounds of tax burden on the purchase. But instead the sale of the other soared with the respectively double predicted order rate.
The rest is quickly told. The car received more powerful petrol engines in subsequent years with more cylinders also and of course diesel engines. Also at the possible dimensions some changed, but a particularly
hectic development could not be said of it. Nevertheless the leaf springs were replaced by coil springs. It is still available in 2014. End of 2015 it will be a thing of the past. Before that there is still a model with ABS.
05/11
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