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The Land Rover seemed extremely good value
at £450 when it was launched in 1948, and indeed it was. It had one
great advantage over most “normal” cars in that it was not
liable to purchase tax - the authorities weren’t too sure how to
class the Land Rover, although its general agricultural uses ensured
that it certainly could not be classed as a passenger car.
At the time of the Land Rover’s launch,
Rover were faced with two main headaches. Would the public have the
confidence to place orders for such a new model? And would the
Government of the time allow Land Rover enough raw materials to
produce the 5,000 examples that the company thought it might sell in
the first year? The good news was that the orders started to flood
in; the bad news was that the Ministry of Supply would only allow
enough steel for the production of 1,000 Land Rovers per year.
Fortunately, Rover were able to persuade the “powers-that-be”
that the new Land Rover should have a great future as a profitable
export, and production was allowed to continue at the planned
levels. in fact, it soon became clear that extra production would be
needed; so much so that in the first year of production, the
original hope of 5,000 units was exceeded by an extra 3,000!
It is true to say that for most of the time
since 1948, each and every Land Rover produced has already had a
customer ready and waiting for it. Such success, particularly in the
Land Rover’s early years, enabled the company to carry out steady
development and improvements...though never simply change for
change’s sake. |
