British vehicle maker Land Rover was conceived by the Rover Company in the waning days of World War Two. The original SUV, which carried the designation “80” when it started production in 1948 was inspired by the American Willys Jeep that had dominated reconnaissance transportation in the war.
The iconic Land Rover is the Defender, which is the current-day successor to the 80. It has not been sold in the U.S. Land Rover in the U.S. has been known as purely a luxury SUV, selling not only leather-lined Land Rovers, but even pricier Range Rovers, to the fat-wallet brigade.
Though Land Rovers rival Jeep for off-road and bad road capability, few American buyers ever deploy the comprehensive off-road system of Land Rovers and Range Rovers on road surfaces more challenging than Rodeo Drive on Black Friday.
Land Rover has had what many would call “ironic” ownership since the mid-1990s when The Rover Group was acquired by German automaker BMW AG. Winston Churchill surely would have cast a jaundiced eye toward the sale of his beloved Rover to the maker of German Luftwaffe aero engines and German military motorcycles. But one wonders what he would have thought when it went it then went into the hands of Indian conglomerate TaTa in 2008 after a decade of ownership by Ford Motor.
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