IT takes a bold owner to fly in the face of tradition, but that’s exactly what the husband and wife team Merlin and Ann Thomas did when they found themselves with a late 1948 model Land Rover that, despite its outward appearance, had a whole different story to tell beneath the shiny green bodywork.
Their newly-purchased 80in might have promised much at first glance; the recently restored vehicle bearing all the right signs of being able to offer a rewarding ownership experience, but when the pair had trouble getting it to run and drive as expected, they turned to Julian Shoolheifer for assistance and issued a simple request: that he fettle the Land Rover – probably a few days’ work in the right hands, and then they could begin to enjoy their latest acquisition.
However, as Shoolheifer and his family-run team started to investigate, they quickly realised that the Series I needed far more than just a fettle. To start with, they couldn’t even get the vehicle to run and a compression test eventually revealed that the engine – a later replacement unit – was barely able to produce a reading and showed virtually no oil pressure. Further investigation on the running gear was similarly damning, and although both the
