Never again!

OKAY. I’ll admit that I’m biased. But I’ve always considered this to be the most significant Range Rover on the planet. It’s the earliest of the two survivors from the seven Velar 100 inch Station Wagon Engineering Prototypes that were built at Solihull between 1967 and 1969. Numbers 100/1 to 100/5 were all scrapped long ago. This one is number 100/6, and 100/7 survives with a collector in the United States. That makes 100/6 the oldest Range Rover in the world. It also happens to have a fascinating history which includes the legendary double crossing of the Sahara and Ténéré deserts in late 1969.

I first became aware of it in the late 1980s, just before I acquired my first Range Rover. I was living in Somerset, and there were stories circulating locally among Land Rover enthusiasts about the oldest Range Rover having ended up in Devon, where it had been dismantled into its component parts with restoration in mind. In those days there was only one monthly magazine dedicated to Land Rovers, the club scene was relatively undeveloped, and the internet was