IN March last year, Mike Read bought a Land Rover, 30 years after he first saw it parked in a field in northeast Scotland. The story of how he and his son, Tom, came to co-own this 1949 Series I is fascinating, and just goes to show that sometimes perseverance pays off.
“I was brought up with P4 Rovers and Land Rovers,” Mike tells me. “My elder brother had a Series I trialler in the 1980s and I decided I wanted to have a go as well, so I kept my eyes open as I travelled around farms in East Anglia, as part of my job with Hoechst running field trials of new crop protection products.
“In 1985 I spotted a wreck in a field at the back of a house at Holbeach St Johns, north of Wisbech. It was a 1953 80in with no engine, windscreen or doors, but the chassis looked reasonably sound. Anyway, I bought it for £80 and within a few weeks I had it running as a trialler with a rather tired 2.0-litre engine installed.
“I joined the Breckland Land Rover Club in 1986 and very quickly realised that to be competitive in
