Series

Land Rover celebrates 50 years of testing at Eastnor Castle #landrover

Land Rover Celebrates 50 Years at Eastnor Castle

Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Land Rover is celebrating 50 years of using the Eastnor Castle estate in Herefordshire as its centre for off road testing and development. Tucked away in rural Herefordshire, this historic piece of English countryside is still an important tool in the research and development of new Land Rovers as well as offering a completely unique Land Rover driving experience to members of the public.

In 1961, Land Rover first chose the 5,000 acre Eastnor Castle estate located near Ledbury, Herefordshire to assess the off-road credentials of their vehicles. Half a century on, the tradition continues, with Eastnor playing a pivotal role in the research and development of Land Rover’s outstanding all-round capability and class-leading off road performance.

As well as the cars themselves, Eastnor has been instrumental in developing an impressive collection of Land Rover technologies; such as Anti-lock Brakes, Adjustable Air Suspension, Electronic Traction Control, Hill Descent Control and Terrain Response® – many of which were world firsts in the 4×4 sector.

The tradition of testing all Land Rover models at Eastnor continues to this day. The Range Rover Evoque was the most recent model to complete its off-road apprenticeship and a large part of the Evoque’s technology, including MagneRide™, was proven on the estate, where ride dampers were tested extensively.

Terrain Response® offers drivers optimal vehicle set-up (electronic and mechanical), and performance, under a variety of off-road conditions.

Whether driving in mud, ruts, rocks, sand, grass, gravel or snow, Terrain Response® has the appropriate setting, and will optimise ride height, engine torque Response®, Hill Descent Control, Electronic Traction Control and transmission settings, ensuring a safe and controlled passage across any terrain. The Eastnor estate provides the ultimate test for all these conditions and is instrumental in the continuing development of this technology.

Eastnor has been used as not only an ideal off-road engineering ground, but since 1989, as an off-road learning centre for the emergency services, explorers, humanitarian societies such as the British Red Cross and, more recently, the general public.

Customers and fans of the brand can now book drive experience days to hone their on and off-road driving skills with tuition from a team of highly qualified Land Rover Experience instructors. Eastnor is one of over 30 centres around the world, and hosts over five and a half thousand visitors every year participating in half or full days, beginner and intermediate training as well as exciting night drives. Over a third of these visitors have travelled from overseas, keen to experience Land Rover in its heartland.

Our YouTube Channel hits 97 videos and over 500,000 upload views #landrover

Since creating the ROVERHAUL YouTube channel back in 2007, I’ve uploaded 97 videos, some original but mostly press videos, slideshows and such, but all Land Rover focused.

I was surprised the way some of the videos really took off.  Thanks for watching and commenting.  And if this kind of stuff interests you, please consider subscribing.

The original and yes I’m driving:

The most viewed, with 45,000 views:

The second most viewed, and this one is actually an original creation:

And a few random favorites:

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YouTube feature–Land Rover-Bred in the Bone

Great 2 part video  – HUE166 is featured and even some center steer shots, I’ve never seen before.  The first part focuses on the first 10 years of Land Rover, the second part shows us the NEW for 1958 Series 2.

Part 1:

Part 2:

YouTube feature–Land Rover-Ready for anything…

All of the driving through the mountains with mood music playing modern videos are great, but videos like these let us remember, how it all really began.  I’ve had a lot of these videos up on my channel for a long time, it’s probably time I post them up here so more people can get their eyes on them.

Part 1:

Part 2:

Assorted Land Rover Series Documents–Roverseas Delivery, Price Lists, etc…

11 Land Rover Series Print Ads from 1952 through the 1970’s

$12,000 1/8 scale Land Rover Series IIA Model

When I first saw this, it took a few minutes to sink in, these guys offer an insanely precise 1/8 model based on the 1964 Land Rover Series IIA.  This is the picture that really put it in perspective, literally:

Here’s their photo gallery:

http://uk.psmscalemodels.com/photos.html

The little details really are great, from someone who actually has touched almost every bolt on one of these Land Rovers, I can really appreciate it.   And then there’s the price, it really is $12,000, made to order and you can specify options you’d prefer like Right hand drive, without soft top, colored soft top, etc…  The steering is functional as are the doors, hood & tailgate with real scale hinges.  Door tops can be removed and more.

They even offer just the chassis for $800 or the engine & gearbox for $1500.

Land Rover – New Grille – Official Picture

Circa 1971

Old Land Rover Brochures, Sales Material & More–Scanned & Posted

I still have huge backlog of old print ads, brochures and more that I just never posted.  I’ll start putting them up over the next few weeks.  To start with here are two new galleries:

Land Rover Series – Brochures & Sales Material

Range Rover Classic  – Brochures, Sales & Tech Material