I am a self confessed Landrover buff/bore, after being introduced to them in the military and spending hours of fun bouncing over fields and sand dunes or the misery of getting wet everytime it rained.
It is historically an example of superb British ingenuity, a post war stop gap vehicle built by Rover, based on the wartime jeep and made with as much left over aircraft aluminium as possible due to shortages of steel.
The one thing that has made it a legend is the over engineering in the base model, which allows it to be abused and used for applications and roles it's designers couldn't have imagined!
From the 1948 series I to the present day defender, the similarities are unmistakable and from the 1950's series II onwards, the body shell has hardly changed! Huge technological advancements saw the series III turn into the 1980's Landrover 90 by moving from leafspring suspension to new fangled coils springs and a new windscreen, but basically the same body. As the axles were a bit wider, someone had a brainwave to stick on some rubber wheel arches. Proper British thinking 
The late 1980's and 1990's saw a rebrand from the L90 to the "defender" to build on it's military roots and success. Still basically the same wagon, same square box body, usual variety of engines, some ok, some awful, most obtained from the parts bin of Rovergroup or who ever owned it at the time. Build quality was always traditional Rovergroup, awful and the butt of jokes worldwide "10,000 rivets driving in formation". But the design was still simple, could be fixed by a DIY mechanic, or a blacksmith in the African wilderness. But she was showing her age and more modern and cheaper Japanese rivals were starting to eat market share.
The naughties saw the landrover getting more and competition from rivals and signalled the beginning of the end. Lots of rumours it would be axed, it couldn't pass various regulations in different countries. Airbags? Modern crumple zones in a square Meccanno set? Then there were worries about the future of Landrover. Vehicles started to get a makeover with better heating systems (the curse of owners for decades), the windscreen vent flaps were welded shut and electronic gizmos started to get added to the dismay of traditional owners. Heated seats? Hill descent control? In a defender?
So she laboured on, under new owners Tata who seemed to have finally found the marketing secret Landrover needed, but looking more like a model Tata would like to forget. She got burdened with more accessories than you can shake a stick at, and enough electrical gizmos that would electrocute you if you tried wading through a river 
But fair play she's managed to survive regulation after regulation and a design dating from the 40's has stayed in production until Dec 2015. Not bad, and I don't care what anyone says, she's British
But if you still want to get one post December, you still can! Landrovers used to be license built by a Spanish company called Santanta who started license copies, then progressed down a slightly different evolutionary path, with Landrovers that looked like Landrovers, but seemed just a little odd. Santana went pop in the 90's but just before they did, the flogged all the tooling to an Iranian firm (what embargo?) who started production (and still do) of local Landroverish Pazhan's.
To be honest, they look pretty good 
Here are my former 90's, although the first (red one) was actually a 100", a long wheel base series 3, cut down and put on a Rangerover chassis. Total bodge and ran like an absolute dog 
My 90 county was awesome. Petrol V8, best engine LR ever made, took it too many a quarry and had lots of fun. Only downside was the 3 miles to the gallon consumption and 100 mile range Just after I took that picture, it ran out out of fuel on the drive..
Current landrover is very shiny, Tata built, build quality is superb, (why now and not in the 70's and 80's?) and far too nice to take off road...
So any other Landrover fans, or anyone miss the demise of another British icon?
Or is it just something that was well past its sell by date?
