It's a V8, mate

RICHARD HALL bought his first Land Rover, a Series III, just after his 18th birthday and has since owned, maintained and restored these vehicles for over 30 years now. He runs a small Land Rover repair and restoration business in Norfolk and every month he lets off steam in LRM.

V8 Land Rovers and I go back a long way. Back in around 1991 I went to a farm sale near Wragby in Lincolnshire. Farm clearance sales could be great places to pick up a bargain, but only if the vendor was unpopular with his neighbours. If the retiring farmer was well-liked, his farming friends would often pay over the odds for all his old junk as a kind of retirement present. At a clearance auction near Boston I managed to pick up a tractor jack and a 30 cwt block and tackle for a pound. I have them still, and sometimes wonder what kind of man the farmer was. At the Wragby sale a couple of old Land Rovers caught my eye. One was an ex-military Series IIA 109 inch in reasonable order. The other was a Series III 109 V8, often referred to as a Stage One.

Back then I knew nothing about old Land Rovers, and the registration number meant little to me. I now realise that JVC 821V was a rather special Stage One, being a factory prototype registered some time before the UK launch of the 109 V8. If I had known that back then I might have done things rather differently. As it was,