Range Rover Reborn: A Dream Come True
As many of you may have noticed, I’m obsessed with Land Rovers. I don’t discriminate. I love them all, except I don’t like white ones. Or the Disco Sport. Or the Evoke. The Range Rover Sport took some warming up to.
You get my point, I only like real Land Rovers. Personally, the older ones are cooler. They’re more simple and aren't trying to hard. They’re designed for a job and do it!
Land Rover is a company and brand that I look up to. The product is great, albeit finicky at times. But even that adds to the story. They also have a history of great advertising The old print ads are iconic. And Land Rover doesn’t take themselves too seriously.
When I heard that Land Rover was factory restoring the original Range Rover, a dream had come true. They’re calling the project, Range Rover Reborn. I’m a Land Rover purist. A few mods are OK, I have (*had) a winch and snorkel, they’re pretty low key though.
Right now, they're restoring 10 Range Rovers from the 1970-1979 with all original parts. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. And there's a lot of broken parts. Land Rover is buying up old Classics, and taking them apart piece by piece and rebuilding them. The goal is to clean and use original parts, however when they need to, Land Rover will manufacture individual pieces. Each Rover takes between 6 months and 1 year to complete. Usually old Range Rovers are cheap, the first one I bought was $1,500. Won it in a bidding war on eBay during a Spanish class at Umass Boston. These however are $169,000.00.
You see, back in the day I wanted to be a car designer. At one point I even wrote Land Rover a letter telling them to save a spot for me; I was coming. And they wrote back! They might have even sent a hat. See, they have such strong branding that I just assumed they had sent me a hat. 20 years later, I’m still keeping them waiting.
