Land Rover: The Story of the Car that Conquered the World. Ben Fogle
took seven tests before I finally passed. I think this story nicely illustrates several points. First, that I am quite a stubborn individual, and second, that I really wasn’t into cars.
For the first year after I passed my test my father kindly lent me the silver-bullet Toyota Space Cruiser whenever I needed transportation. It was without doubt the most uncool car to be seen at the wheel of, but it did the job and I can remember driving piles of friends down to Devon and Cornwall in it. It was, as my father often reminded us, very ‘functional’.
The first car that I owned myself was a grey Nissan Micra. It was the archetypal bland, homogeneous car, but it was a very generous eighteenth-birthday gift from my father, who quite rightly pointed out that it was, as ever, economical and functional. My mother had tied a giant red ribbon into a bow on the roof when they presented it to me. I climbed in immediately and drove it to Hyde Park in Central London – and straight into a red Volvo. Within an hour of getting my first car it was a near write-off and was being towed away by a recovery vehicle. Once repaired, though, my little Nissan Micra served me well. I took that little car everywhere – to Scotland, the French Alps, Spain. She was a trustworthy little vehicle that didn’t break down once in the seven years I drove her.
Despite my early difficulties in learning to drive, I loved driving. As a family we used to drive a lot. Every weekend we would pack up the Mobile Animal Clinic, and latterly the Space Cruiser, with my two sisters, our two golden retrievers and Humphrey, our African grey parrot.
In the summers, my sisters and I would be packed off to live with my paternal grandparents in Canada, where we experienced another approach to driving. My late grandmother, Aileen, was anything but your ordinary grandparent – agile and strong until the day she died, aged 100, she always stood out from the crowd, so it is probably no surprise that her car of choice was a sports car, a green Camaro with a V8 engine.
The ritual packing of the car would continue on the other side of the Atlantic, as Canadian dogs and cousins were all herded into the tiny sports car for the two-hour journey from the city of Toronto out to my grandparents’ little summer cottage on the shores of Lake Chemong.
Land Rovers did not cross my path again in any memorable way until 1999, when I took part in Castaway for the BBC. This programme was a year-long social experiment to see whether a group of urbanites could create a fully self-sufficient society from scratch. For this, we were marooned on an uninhabited island in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland, in the Western Isles.
It was a remote, rugged place, and we were left there, isolated from the outside world. We had no internet, telephone nor television. It was just us and the windswept landscape of Taransay. The island had once been inhabited, but all that was left of its one-time occupation was a small farmhouse and an animal steading. Dotted around the island were remnants of its earlier history, in the form of black houses, their crumbling ruins a reminder of the crofters that had long ago worked the land.
The island topography was boggy and mountainous. There were no paths, tracks or roads, and crossing the island would involve a yomp through knee-high bogs and up the steep flanks of the hills that dominated the landscape. The absence of roads made the remains of the island’s sole vehicle even more remarkable and curious. Hidden near the animal steading that we had converted into the kitchen and communal area was the rusting body of a Land Rover Series II.
That Land Rover confused me more than almost every other aspect of island life. I couldn’t begin to fathom how such a vehicle would have been used, and why it was there. It wasn’t just the logistics of getting the vehicle onto the island that baffled me; rather, apart from the small area around which we built our settlement – which was about the size of two football pitches – I couldn’t imagine how the Land Rover would get across country. It seemed impossible that any vehicle, even a Land Rover, could make its way through this inhospitable geography.
The car had long since lost its engine, and its skeleton-like remains made a perfect place for the children to play and pretend they were driving somewhere. That island had a strange effect on all of us and even I used to sit in that dilapidated car and imagine I was on a journey, driving across a vast wilderness.
It was then and there that I resolved that I would one day get a Land Rover.
As our only communication with the outside world was via letter, and as the end of the year and the experiment loomed large, I wrote to my father to ask him to help me find a Land Rover for my return. When the end came it was a bittersweet moment. I longed to leave that island but I also worried about adapting to life back in the real world. For a year we had been isolated from the rest of the world, and suddenly, come 1 January 2001, having been stripped of our anonymity, we were about to be thrust back into civilisation – not to mention the public eye. It was a daunting prospect.
We were helicoptered off the island in a carefully choreographed live TV broadcast. I was last to leave. Tears streamed down my cheeks as we crossed that tiny body of turquoise water that separated us from the next main island of Harris.
Several dozen journalists and photographers had braved the Hebridean winter to gather on Horgabost beach ready for our arrival. It was the beginning of a new life in front of the media glare – and it scared me.
We transferred into coaches and began what seemed like a victory drive across the island to the Harris Hotel, where we would begin our decompression. I can’t begin to tell you how strange it was to be back in civilisation. A press conference was convened in the hotel’s dining room and we were thrust into the hungry grasp of the British press. It was quite a revelation. The questions. The spin. The stories. The money offers. The exclusives. Rival newspapers vied to outbid one another to get the scoop. We castaways became pawns in a game about which we knew very little. We didn’t understand the rules and we had very little help to pick our way through the minefield.
We were due to stay in the hotel for a few days to acclimatise and spend time with the show’s psychologist, but I found the whole experience overwhelming.
‘There’s something waiting for you in the car park,’ one of the show’s executive producers told me.
I escaped the claustrophobia and heat of the hotel and strode out into the wind and rain of the small gravel car park. There, tucked away in the corner, was the unmistakable shape of a blue Land Rover Defender. I pulled the handle of the unlocked door and climbed in. A set of keys had been ‘hidden’ beneath the sun visor. A smile enveloped my face. It was the Land Rover smile – more of which later.
I relaxed. It was as if all the fears and worries that had been brewing in that small hotel disappeared. I had my first Land Rover. It may seem strange, but I had no idea how it had got there, who had bought it, how much it cost or even if it really was mine. The world had become such a strange place that it never even occurred to me to ask.
While the rest of the castaways had been booked to fly back to civilisation from Stornoway, I had worried about flying back with my Labrador, Inca. She had only known freedom for a year; she hadn’t worn a collar nor been on a lead in that time and I couldn’t bear the thought of confining her to the hold of a plane in a cage, so driving seemed the natural solution to the problem.
My first night in a proper bed was not the luxury I had been anticipating. I found the central heating stifling and oppressive and the bed was far too soft – even apart from the fact that my mind was spinning and reeling. I was confused and, if I’m honest, I was scared, too.
I’m not sure what came over me or even why it happened, but I woke up in the middle of the night that first night – and left.
In retrospect it was completely out of character. I had planned to spend several more days with the show’s execs and the gathered journalists for interviews and photo shoots, but I was overwhelmed by the new situation I found myself in. So, quietly, I packed the Land Rover with my worldly possessions and Inca and placed the key in the ignition. The engine turned several times and then … spluttered to a stop. Several mysterious lights illuminated the dashboard. I tried again, willing the car to start, then finally the engine choked and spluttered to life. The whole car shuddered and vibrated. Inca sat in the