SOMETIMES, you come across a Land Rover that completely redefines how you think about that particular model. All your preconceptions and experiences of other vehicles of the same ilk are forgotten, and a new benchmark is forged that all others will be measured against. The Series IIA you see here is one of those Land Rovers.
To be honest, I first became curious about this particular Series IIA because the man responsible for the stunning photos in this story, Alisdair Cusick, told me how it had been converted to use a Ford Ecoboost petrol engine. I’d seen this conversion done in Defenders, but never in a leaf-sprung Land Rover. So my interest was already piqued, but I wasn’t prepared for the level this little IIA has been finished to, and the cleverly-selected modifications that have made their way onto the 88in to make it a classic that anyone can climb into and enjoy to the full without worrying about setting a choke, double-declutching a non-syncro gearbox and wrestling with the steering in car parks.
To the hardcore Series aficionados among us, deleting these traits might sound like blasphemy. But that isn’t something that Terry
