ONCE UPON A MEANTIME

This convinced him that a vehicle could be built to give much improved off road performance, without sacrificing any of the existing Land Rover’s attributes’ recalls his contemporary at sol hull, Geof Miller. This provided the catalyst that created a new design project known as the interim station wagon.

Geof reveals that design layouts initially considered the possibility of using the 2.25 litre Land Rover petrol engine from the SIIA or the Rover 3.0 litre straight six. But the unit that finally got the nod was the newly acquired Buick 3.5 litre V8.

This together with other drive train requirement and interior layouts reflecting Rover P6 car standard of comfort, dictated a vehicle wheelbase of 99.5 inches. The design them Gordon Bash ford (chief designer) Joe Brown (deputy) Phil Banks (chassis) and Phil Jackson( body) decided that the wheelbase should be rounded up to 100 inchers, and so, overnight, the interim Station Wagon become the 100 inch Land Rover Station Wagon.