>The >first Land Rover (80) was a rebodied US Military Jeep. The Landrover 88 was >the first with its own chassis. The Defender is a (somewhat) look alike that >has nothing in common with the original. By that standard the current Jeep >has be in production since 1941
Graywolf, A few points of clarification sir. Yes, the very first LR was based on a jeep chassis (note no capitalisation of jeep - didn't become a trade name until much later). But when it went into production, the chassis were made by Rover to their own design, based on the jeep chassis. In that respect the jeep chassi was used as the basis of the LR chassis. I'm not sure what you mean by 'with its own chassis'. The Series 1 was built using its won chassis. If you took the body off a Series 1 LR and tried to mount a jeep body onto it with no modifications, it would not fit. In my book that means the LR had its own chassis. The Defender is almost identical in design,both in body and chassis to the originals. The major differences are: coil springs instead of leafs, and full-time 4WD instead of part-time 4WD, although the earliest S1s did have full-time 4WD I believe. The way the body is designed is the same: bulkhead seperating engine bay and driver, rear body tub, aluminium panels. Sure there are things like power assisted brakes / steering / ABS / etc but these owe nothing to the original design - they have changed over the years without the design changing at all. This makes for difficult situations - shoe-horning the V8 into the relatively small engine bay is always tricky. Heck, my Defender had Electronic Traction Control the same as the top of the line Range Rover, but I'll bet it was prised into place ;-) The Land Rover owes its heritage to the Willys jeep, it is true and undisputed, and respectfully acknowledged, but after the best parts of the design were incorporated into the LR, it then became a vehicle in its own right and evolved from there. Best, Cheers, Cotty ___/\__ || (O) | People, Places, Pastiche ||=====| www.macads.co.uk/snaps _____________________________ Free UK Mac Ads www.macads.co.uk
