WHEN does an interest become an obsession? It’s a good question and one that I’ve frequently asked myself, having many years ago fallen into the dangerous and expensive world of the obsessive Land Rover collector. For Richard Hopkins, the line was crossed when he met Julian Lamb, founder of the CVC Register, later renamed the Company Vehicle Collection, and a serial Land Rover collector and restorer himself.
Like so many collectors, Richard can trace the roots of his obsession to his childhood years. “My interest started in the very early days of the Range Rover,” he tells me. “It was in the early 1970s and I would have been about eight- or nine-years-old. I was standing at the bus stop outside the Rover gate on Lode Lane with my mum. She was a school teacher and took the bus to work. I’d wait with her until the bus came and then I would walk around the corner to my school. I was always the first one there. While waiting at the bus stop, I would watch the new Range Rovers leaving the factory gate. I remember thinking how wonderful they looked, and I promised myself that one day I would have one.
“On the days when I walked to school on my own, I went via Knightsbridge Road. I can still that the red Range Rover I’d seen all those years ago was actually a Velar. It was YVB 166H and the driveway it was parked on belonged to a house owned by Roger Crathorne’s mum and dad.
