The lifelong Land Rover historian
LAND ROVER LEGENDS 33
“YOU’RE the first person to have approached the family to research the real story behind the Land Rover!” These were the words spoken by Stephen Wilks, the son of Rover’s Technical Director (later Managing Director and, finally, Chairman) Maurice Wilks, when he met John Smith for the first time. How that 1987 meeting came about is interesting, as are its consequences in terms of the unravelling of the truth about the genesis of the very first Land Rover.
“On the evening of The Great Storm of October 1987 I was talking with the Rev Andrew Stevens,” remembers John. “Andrew was one of the founders of the Land Rover Series One Club and I’d joined it in 1979, shortly after it was formed. I was telling Andrew that I thought the true story of the birth of the Land Rover had never really been told, and the few accounts of it that existed in print at that time didn’t really make sense. I’d already started my own research and I told Andrew that I was thinking of writing a book on the subject. Andrew suggested I speak to Bishop Warren Hunt who was a friend of Maurice Wilks – they took family holidays together – and it was Bishop Hunt who was able to give me Stephen’s telephone number.
“That initial meeting with Stephen Wilks was to reveal just how inadequate those early accounts of the development and launch of the very first Land Rovers really were. It also changed my life quite dramatically and set me on a course that would lead to the publication in 2009 of my book, Land Rover: the Formative Years 1947-1967, which remains the definitive work on the first 20 years of Land Rover history.”
John’s fascination with Land Rovers began in childhood. In the years immediately following the end of the Second World War, John’s father had a smallholding near Dartford in Kent, and he would regularly drive in the family’s 1939 Austin Cambridge to markets to buy piglets and day-old chicks. “The Austin had been converted to a pick-up truck,” says John, “and it was at these markets that I saw my very first Land Rovers. I was only a youngster at the time, and I was probably attracted by their red and yellow gear controls!
“I also remember reading the, and after that the Land Rover bug had well and truly bitten! At the age of 14 I wrote to our local Rover dealer, Gelston’s of Dartford, requesting brochures on the current Land Rover models. These duly arrived by post but on the following Saturday there was a knock on our door and there stood the salesman from Gelston’s! Dad was rather surprised, and I had to confess rather promptly that it was me who had made the enquiry. Thankfully, the sales rep was not put out one bit and happily talked to Dad and me about the latest Series II models. But dad couldn’t be persuaded, partly because he’d given up the smallholding but also because he had recently bought a Sage Green Rover 90 saloon”
