The Off-Roader: Workhorse Turned Status Symbol

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0:33Jaders. I really don't like them. You don't need a Volvo XC90. You can have a Volvo XC60. But people go for the 90 just because it's like going up to 11 in spinal taps. Do you know what I mean? But I wonder how the troops felt near the Tommies when Lord Rosemary turned up in his Rolls-Royce Phantom to lend a hand. And they've been in some rat-infested trench. The idea that the sexier, the slicker you are as a car brand, the cooler you are, is kind of out the window these days. You could use them in either forward or reverse. So you could travel backwards at 60 miles an hour. Yeah. Which is quite frightening.

1:15Welcome to the Luxury Dispatch, the podcast that reveals the refined and the rare, the stories, people, and items that make up the luxury industry. I'm Tom Chamberlain, and today, our topic is the history of the off-roader. From functional vehicle to a fast, fashionable, urban wealth indicator, we'll be unpicking this evolution and try to figure out what has made the format so desirable. So, who better to be joined by today than my good friend, journalist, author, and classic car expert, Simon de Burton. Simon, lovely to see you. Tom, hello. Thank you for having me. Simon, one thing I've always known about you is because you live in Dartmoor.

1:52So I've always imagined you sort of emerging out from the midst of, in the Grimpen Mire of Dartmoor, in a sort of Arthur Conan Doyle way, on your motorbike. But you seem sort of the kind of ultimate off-roader man, I would say, of anyone I know, at least, anyway. And so the off-roader is really embedded in your sort of soul. I mean, you have plenty, you know them very well. And so, I mean, tell me about your relationship with the off-roader. Well, my relationship with the modern off-roader is not terribly good. Because as you say, living on Dartmoor, as we call it, people tend to come down there in these modern Range Rovers, and they're quite enormous, you know, and they don't want to scrape them down the sides of the hedges.

2:38Yeah. The roads are just too narrow for these big cars. Yes. And they've got every possible convenience inside. They've got reversing cameras. They've got those things that peep the whole time. They've got things that stop the car if there's any danger of hitting something. but they never use them, these people. They'll never, ever use them. They always expect you to back up. If they've got 20 feet into a little passing place, they refuse. 99 % of the time, they refuse. So you have to reverse in your terrible old Land Rover that you can't see out the back of. It's got no power steering. It's covered in dents and things because you've hit rocks so many times.

3:15So that has given me a very sort of... I have a bad feeling about these big off-roaders. Jaded. I really don't like them. I think that it's an exaggeration, I suppose, but they're sort of symbolic of all the things that have gone wrong with the human race, I think. I mean, people that have them... Get off the fence, Simon. I mean, people that have them, they always say, it's so wonderful because I'm so safe. I mean, that's a way of saying, I can hit someone else. I'm all right, Jack. I'll be fine. And, oh, you've got such wonderful visibility. In other words, you don't really have to care about looking around, because if you happen to be in a slight bit of difficulty, you'd be able to spot it, because some poor sod in a Mazda MX-5 or something is just about to sort of go under your front wheel.

4:00And emerge out the other side perfectly fine. Exactly. It's so big. You once wrote an article for me for The Rake that discussed the idea of the rot setting in. And for that, you went all the way back to the Second World War, and the arrival of the Willys Jeep. But let's go even further back, and just talk about the genesis of the off-roader. And this is, you know, pre-Land Rover, pre-Willys Jeep. This is a world where automobiles, however they were made, people would use them for off-roading reasons. So why don't we talk about those and, you know, delve a little into the world of automobiles and the kind of eccentric things that people got up to.

4:39Well, cars were about wealth, weren't they? Yes, they were. It was ever thus, I guess, to a large extent. Yeah. And the idea now that you have to have this fabulous vehicle that really is incredibly capable off-road, if you wanted to take it there, seems odd when you think, in the early 20th century, when cars were becoming popular, they were a symbol of adventure. But there weren't that many roads. But people still wanted to take them places and experiment to see how far they could get. And I suppose the best example of that is in 1907, the original Peking to Paris race. And it was advertised in Le Mans newspaper.

5:24And entries were invited. And I think they got 30 or 40 entrants. In the end, only five people went through with it. And they had the cars taken out to Peking. But bear in mind, it's 9 ,000 miles from Peking to Paris. It's a long way. I mean, it's a hell of a drive. Not many people in China had cars. And nobody had ways to turn this around to get around. Most of the people between Paris and... had probably never seen a car. No, yeah, yeah. And anyway, they went out there, these five people. By the way, who established that there was a sort of a possible route? I don't... Well, the route was impossible.

5:59That was the amazing thing about it. Oh, okay, fine, okay. And, you know, there are pictures of these... Because they made the route along the telegraph route, so... Purely because it was alliterative, peeking to Paris. Yeah. Well, maybe, I don't know. But the route was along the lines of where telegraphs could be sent from. Okay, okay, right. And that kept it in the news. That's why there are pictures of it and why people know about it. I see. So, but there are pictures of these huge cars being pulled through swamps with oxen, you know, because there were no roads. They kept getting stuck, yeah, yeah.

6:28There were no roads. And the winner was Prince Borghese, Italian chap, in his Italo, seven-litre Italo. and the second place was a chap in a spiker car, Dutch spiker. He was an Englishman. But he borrowed the car and when he got out to Peking, he admitted he didn't have enough money to fund his journey. So he had to borrow petrol and borrow people to help him maneuver the car and so on. Amazing. And then when he got to the end, he's almost back to Paris and he was eventually arrested for fraud. Because the whole thing had been a scam, the way he'd got hold of the car. Really? Anyway, Prince Borghese, he won.

7:08His prize was a magnum of mum, champagne, having travelled 9 ,000 miles. It took him two months, which doesn't seem that long, considering no roads, ancient cars. Yeah, that's a bloody good effort. Yeah. But didn't you say that there was somebody whose sort of butler had driven most of the way? Yeah, I think that was the English chap. I think he managed to recruit a chauffeur and the chauffeur did most of the driving. So good. So, of course, I mean, these are the nascent years of automobiles full stop, isn't it? Yeah. But were they capable? I mean, were the engines big enough to take them off-road?

7:46And do you think it was the kind of intrepid spirit of, you know, because back then we're talking about just the year of post Richard Burton, Hanningspeak, and all those adventurers. I mean, I can't remember when King Solomon's Mines and things came out, but ultimately, this idea of adventure. Adventure, yeah. And empire was huge in Britain. Yeah. So is this why Europe was also such a big part of it? Because they all had their own empires and they all kind of dreamt of far off lands. Well, yeah. And because of the empire, Africa was Britain, wasn't it? It was part of Britain. Yes, and we saw that wonderful video you sent of those men who just thought, I will go on a drive.

8:25And they basically just followed the red route of the empire through down to Cape Town. Exactly. Well, after the First World War, as with all wars, the development of the car was mechanical. The development was very rapid, wasn't it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because of the First World War. Like it always happens with the war, it accelerates everything. Yes, it does, yeah. So after the war and after people sort of recovered, by the late 20s, early 30s, adventure, people were really looking for adventure. They were bored. and all these outposts that you've just spoken about, you know, in Africa, India and all the rest of it, they knew people there, they knew other English people.

9:05So it was like going to see your uncle, you know, working on a tea plantation in Assa. In actual fact, I do know someone who did that. He drove from Camden to Assam in a Mini, 962. I'll tell you about him later. But, so in the 30s, when this was all starting and the car was becoming more reliable and more of a sort of understood object, that's when people started doing these great journeys. And the one we spoke about was the... It ended up with a book called Turn Left, The Rifts Have Risen. Yes. And it was an actual incident on the trip. And the Riffians were a Berber tribe in northern Morocco.

9:44And they were on this journey to Cape Town. And they actually had to turn left in Africa, in North Africa, because there was an uprising on their normal route. But these two men went in a Morris 8, which is, I mean, the car would fit on this mat. Yeah, I mean, it isn't big. It's minuscule. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they did this incredible journey. It took them sort of six or seven months. But you know why? One of them was saying, he goes, do you know why I went on this trip? And he goes, no, no, no, I never knew why. And he goes, it was because I'd been rejected by a girl and I was feeling most down.

10:18So you do what you, of course, do, is just get in the car and drive down to the other side of the world. And the wonderful thing about it, it was filmed. We've all been there, Simon. We have, yeah. Not quite that far. But it was filmed. And it's incredible. And it's everything, every cliche you can imagine about colonialism. The pith helmet. The, you know, empire building shorts. Mustaches. Pipe constantly on the go. Of course, absolutely. But they did it in this tiny car. And the reason they could do it is because the car was so small. Because you don't want weight and you don't want huge tires and all the things that you've got on a modern Range Rover.

10:53Yeah. That's the last thing you want. You want something really light that, if necessary, you could more or less pick it up and move it. Yeah. And you mentioned the war, of course, that the RAC had... There was a kind of selection of volunteers who decided, you know, we're the ones with cars. Yeah. So we'll go to the front line and help out where we can. All the restaurants, yeah. Yeah. And they were kind of a volunteer. So they were almost all like early day couriers during the war effort. And, I mean, because, you know, there was a lot of horses, oxen, who were pulling guns and things, but ultimately, cars were the next thing that needed to be a substitute for that.

11:30No, horses were the, you know, they were the key on the Western Front. Yeah. Motorized vehicles were few and far between. Yeah, I think they had a struggle when they were there. I think there's images of those cars really struggling on the front line. But I wonder how the troops felt, you know, the Tommies, when sort of Lord Rosemary turned up in his Rolls-Royce Phantom to lend a hand. And they've been in some rat-infested trench for about six months. Well, there's a great publication called The Wipers Times, which is, so, they spelled it W-I-P-E-R-S, but it was after the fact that Ypres was Y-P-R-E-S, and so they all called it Wipers.

12:09And when they took over Ypres, they found a working printing press. And basically, a team of writers or people with good gallows humor made this publication. And I bet you if I read enough of it, there would be some sort of mention there. There'd be a reference in there. But either way, I'd like to think the gallows humor from the front line would have enjoyed the sight of Lord Rosemary showing up. But, yeah, as we said, because cars were few and far between in the First World War compared with afterwards. Yeah, when did... Electricity was, what, 1905, I think it was, or 1908. It was in the first decade of the 20th century was when electricity became something that was publicly accessible.

12:59So when was the car something that people would frequently have? Well, I think probably after 1920. Yes, yeah. You know, once that war had finished and people getting back on their feet and they weren't afraid to sort of be seen to have money and all that stuff. That's probably when that happened. And as you said, the development of it was so rapid. It were called dog carts, some of them. So they were literally like a cart and you sat on this sort of bench with a tiller steering wheel. And then within 15 years, they'd gone to sort of incredibly sort of sleek, well-designed and fast things. Some would do over 100 miles an hour easily.

13:39And when was the Bentley Blower and the Bentley Boys? Yeah, they were late 20s into the 30s. Yeah, there you go. So that's really when motor racing became a thing that people became obsessed with. With Brooklyn in the 20s and 30s. Wolf Bonato and all that part. Yeah. Because it's so funny, because I think about the Travelers Club. It's a gentleman's club in London. It was set up, I think, by Wellington. I need to check that, but I'm pretty sure it was Duke of Wellington. and the rule was you could join it if you'd been 500 miles from London. Which if you think about it, it's not that far. Well, not to us.

14:16No. They didn't have easy jets. Yes, exactly. But when you think about the peaking to Paris, you know, that's a lot further away. They could all join. But people were so intrepid then in a way that they're just not now. Yes, correct. So shall we fast forward to the Second World War and I guess it's the Willys Jeep is the sort of next iteration of household name off-roaders. Yeah. So where did that come from? Well, that came from the US government. They put out tender asking for a manufacturer to come up with a light utility vehicle. It was good off-road. It was very easy to maintain and very easy to build.

15:03and there was a very limited amount of time that they got. I think they only gave, I might be wrong, but I think it was about five weeks to come up with this. So obviously things are hotting up for the amount. I mean, that's, yeah. I mean, that's, yeah. And they had tenders from Ford, I think, a company called Bantam. Yep. And Willis. Yep. And Willis got the contract. Were they an established brand before? A very small company. Right, okay. And obviously they wanted tens of thousands of these things. As somebody's sort of garden shed. Exactly, more or less, yeah. So when they realized that they wouldn't be able to fulfill orders, that's why Ford and Bantam Overland, it was called actually, Bantam Overland, they made them as well to get the numbers out.

15:48Okay, so everyone chipped in in a sort of collegiate way. But it was all to this one design. Great. And they made them in France as well, a company called Hotchkiss. Yeah. took it after the war and built them in France. But the Willis Jeep was, I mean, an incredible vehicle. I mean, it was super light. It had this engine called, it was called a Fireball, the engine. And it was quite a powerful little petrol engine. Only three-speed gearbox. Obviously, no roof. And super light. And superb looking. Brilliant looking. Especially with the US Army's sort of white star on the bonnet. Yeah. And it's kind of that, you know, it's a sort of square bonnet, isn't it?

16:26And it just looks so superb. But it's one of those, what do they call it, form and function, you know? It looks good because it was made for a purpose, and that purpose had to be fulfilled, but it also made it an amazing looking, a very sort of cool looking vehicle. And what was the British version of that? Because before the Land Rover, there was this waterproof one, wasn't there? That was after... Well, the idea... Because the Jeep was used by the British Army. Yes. And David Sterling's, you know, the long-range desert group, subsequently SAS, they used Jeeps for a lot of their early missions.

17:03So tell me about how the Land Rover arrived on the scene. They didn't have any Land Rovers in the war. They weren't designed until 1948. Yeah. And that, again, like the Willis Jeep, is an incredible... Who could possibly have thought that when the Wilkes Brothers, who, I think it was Morris who designed the Land Rover, and his brother was the chairman of Rover Cars. And they had a property in Anglesey. And that Land Rover was drawn out, the shape, by Morris Wilkes in the sand on the beach. Cool. And it's just a square. It's like the sort of thing a child would draw, isn't it? It's just a doodle.

17:39Yeah. And it pretty much remained that way when it was put into production. Yeah. And when they got the prototype, the first few prototypes going, they took them up to... They had another estate up in Islay and they took them up there for testing. And the name Land Rover now, I mean, it's just... Everyone knows Land Rover, don't they? And it's the sort of thing that if you asked a marketing company to come up with a really good name for a vehicle that's for off-road, they probably wouldn't be able to come up with that. And if they did, they'd want millions for it. But apparently the story behind that name They were testing these cars up on Islay.

18:18And their ghillie saw this thing going around, a Scottish guy, and sort of asked what it was. And they were saying, well, we're trying to make a car that you can use off-road as well as on-roads. And he sort of replied, apparently, so what you're saying is you're making a rover for the land. And so he came up with the name, you know, because it's Land Rover, isn't it? Very good. And, yes, that was 1948 that went into production. But that was really intended to be, that was an agricultural vehicle. Yes, it's basically like a tractor. Like a tractor. A tractor you could get up to 40, 50 miles an hour on the road.

18:59Yeah, and pull all sorts of things behind it. And if you look at the early Land Rovers at the back, there's a big hole in the back of them. These were known as the series one. Yeah, well, that hole existed right up until the Series 3, which was up until the early 80s. Yeah. But that was for a thing called a power takeoff. So you could put that through, you could put this sort of prop shaft through that hole. Yeah. And you could run the engine, and it would turn this prop shaft, and you could attach implements to it. Interesting. Yeah. Okay, so the Land Rover's out. Land Rover's out. Was it popular from the start?

19:38I think it was. Yeah, I think it was. Because people, there was competition for it, because you were saying that in the 50s, there was a sort of, there was a, do you see the Champ? The Austin Champ. The Land Rover came out in 1948, the very first one. And then in the early 50s, the army wanted a vehicle that, they thought they needed something more sophisticated than the Land Rover. They had started using them. But they thought they needed something that could do more things. what they were, I don't really know. So Austin created this... It had an incredibly long official MOD name, which I can't remember, with lots of slashes and dots and things.

20:22But it was basically, you know, it was an Austin champ. And that was actually... The champ was the civilian version of it, because they were allowed to make a certain number for sale to civilians in order to be able to make a profit out of it. But it was unbelievably complicated, this thing. Although it was fantastic in its own way, but it was just too complicated. It had a Rolls-Royce engine, a small Rolls-Royce built engine. It had a gearbox that you could drive. It had a five-speed gearbox, which was quite unusual in the 50s. But the first gear was really literally crawling pace, so you could sort of go up rocks and things like that.

20:58And then the other four gears, you could use them in either forward or reverse. So you could travel backwards at 60 miles an hour. Yeah. She's quite frightening. And I can tell you it is because... You've driven it? Well... Or you've been in it? Yeah, when I was very small, my brothers were considerably older than me. Yeah. And by the time I was sort of four or five, they were, you know, into their 20s. And... That is a good gap. We had one of these champs, or they had this champ. And I remember I was about five, and they took me out in it. And Julian was driving. And we were driving along, and he suddenly slowed down.

21:37turned around and we started going backwards. And obviously, I didn't have a clue what was going to happen next or what it really meant, but he said, we're just going to do some overtaking. And I didn't realize, but he was able to change up through the gearbox and get the thing into fourth gear, going backwards. And I just remember being absolutely petrified because we were going backwards in the same direction as other people going forwards. And we were going past them, you know. I mean, that's terrifying. But arguably, that could be useful for an off-roader. Well, for the military, it's fantastic, because it means if you need to get away quickly, the last thing you want to do is to be turning around and presenting your entire sort of flank.

22:18You can just back up very rapidly. Yeah. And it's an amazing looking thing as well. It really looks... Yeah, and fully waterproof. Yes. Yeah, amazing. Unlike a Land Rover, which has got a wading depth of only about sort of, I think, half a meter. Yeah. the champ, you can go... Submerge. So you're completely submerged. As long as you can breathe yourself, you'll be all right. You'll be fine. In theory, yeah. Excellent. And you were saying that Churchill got a Land Rover, didn't he? A Land Rover, yeah. That was in 1955, I think. Okay. As well. But it was presented to him by Land Rover as a sort of thank you for everything he had done.

22:56Yeah. Even though by then, I think he was... He's getting on. Yeah. Land Rover wanted to sort of say thank you to him for everything he'd done. And so they made this Land Rover 86-inch wheelbase at Series 1. And it was specially made for him in as much as it had an extra-wide passenger seat. So they did away with the third seat in the middle because he was quite broad. Yeah. Can we find a more charming term for... He was better upholster than the Land Rover. He needs to be respectful to the old man. It had a sort of leather grab handle to make it more comfortable, you know, because he liked to be driven by then.

23:35Yeah, yeah. So this extra wide seat, the leather grab handle, a leather door opener as well. And in the back, there was a box which they had fitted, especially for his bricklaying gear, because his hobby was bricklaying. He loved bricklaying. So he could put his trowel in there, a few bricks, a bit of cement. Maybe a hod.

23:56so that car was sold off from a chartwell estate in the 70s and it had been used on the farm then it was sold in a farm sale with lots of implements and all the rest of it and a man bought it and subsequently sold it to this other chap called frank key who had a farm inst mary cray in kent and he kept it and used it as a farm vehicle for years and years and then in 2000 um Sotheby's held its first online auction and persuaded this chap, Frank Key, to put the car in the sale. And as a result of that, they wanted to get some publicity for it. And so they said, did I want to go and have a look at this Land Rover and write a story about it?

24:38Which I did. And he let me drive it, which is quite amazing. Great. Just being in the bar. So you've driven it? Yeah. Amazing. He just gave me the key. He said, I'll just take it around the field. And he wanted£10 ,000 for it, which at the time seemed insane, you know, for this old battered Land Rover. Yeah. and he didn't get it. So he put it away, kept it for 15 years, and then it was put up for auction again, 2015. At that time, it made 129 ,000. Amazing. So the Land Rover was coming out. It was becoming popular. Churchill had one. But the rest of the world was doing what exactly with cars? Was it all saloon?

25:17Was it, you know, what was happening with regards to SUVs and off-roaders? Well, there were other companies in Europe. Fiat, for example, made a sort of Jeep-like vehicle, as did Peugeot and other European manufacturers. But over in America, Jeep itself, which had obviously produced the first really kind of effective off-road vehicle as we know them nowadays, as in the Willis Jeep. Yeah, yeah. They, in the 50s, America, you know, was becoming incredibly sort of affluent. Yes. It was a brave new world, wasn't it? Great time for cars. Fantastic time for cars. Amazing designers. Buick and Chrysler.