Yahoo News The ultimate barn find? First production Land Rover to be restored
This vehicle is likely to play a major role in the celebrations of Land Rover's 70th anniversary, for on April 30th, 1948 the car went on display to the public for the first time at the Amsterdam motor show.
This example is one of historical importance, on a par with the original Mini or Model T, for while HUE 166 is famously the world’s oldest Land-Rover, this is the first production model.
The original custodian of JUE 477, chassis number 86001, in July of 1948 was a member of the works’ development team and it spent its first two years at the Solihull factory.
By February 1950 it has been sold to Professor Mcewen of Newcastle University, at which point it gained a registration number. The next owner was David Fairless, who originally intended to buy a tractor rather than a second-hand Series 1 Land-Rover, and JUE 477 was initially used for agricultural work.
As is often the case with venerable vehicles, it was eventually parked up and when a small group of LR enthusiasts came across it in 1995 its condition was not exactly pristine. Three years later JUE 477 made a brief but highly memorable appearance at the Land-Rover’s 50th birthday celebrations at Shugborough Hall and this inevitably attracted considerable interest.
According to the Royal Automobile Club’s website the Land-Rover “then moved out of the public eye into a barn on the family farm until the decision was taken in 2017 to seek a new owner and guarantee its long-term future”.
The Series 1 will be subject to “a carefully considered restorative process that retains the remarkable history, original components and unique details”. And, as the photographs illustrate, anyone taking on JUE 477 will have a task that may be easily described as “quite formidable”.
To mark its 70th anniversary this year, Land Rover is restoring one of the three pre-production Land Rovers that had been shown at the model’s launch at the 1948 Amsterdam motor show – a car that had been missing for 63 years before being rediscovered recently.
Today, the fascination with the priceless first production example is not just in experiencing the Land-Rover in its first incarnation but seeing a machine that literally shaped automotive and social history. “A Maid of All Work for The Farmer” thought Commercial Motor in April 1948 before going on to rave ‘‘Four-wheel Drive, Power Available at Three Auxiliary Points, and an Engine of Unusual Design, Form Outstanding Features of a New Rover Product”.
If JUE 477 and its stablemates had not appealed to their intended market L-R might have been an intriguing footnote in the story of Rover's Viking badge but as early as 1950 Solihull had already built more than 24,000 Land-Rovers and earned £5 million in foreign currency.
Today the many and various heirs to this Land-Rover on show at the RAC in Pall Mall may be seen across the globe and all of them owe a debt to a small 4x4 utility vehicle that left the production lines at a time of smog, Woodbines and “Export or Die”.
It is to be fervently hoped that JUE 477 remains in the UK, for it is both a rare example of a design that genuinely merits the term “iconic’ and one of the most important vehicles to be made in this country.
Quite simply, it altered the face of transport - on and off the road.
For tips and advice, visit our Advice section, or sign up to our newsletter here
More classic car stories at Telegraph Cars
