Our Cars: 2015 Land Rover Defender 90 Heritage

I’ve always liked a trad Land Rover. Whatever era, from early Series cars to late-model Defenders, there’s something about these machines I find tremendously appealing.

I didn’t grow up on a farm but my family had friends who were dairy farmers out on the Cheshire plain and it still spools brightly in my brain, the childhood memory of bouncing along in their workhorse Series 3. Or, better yet, riding in the empty livestock trailer towed behind it. It was the 1980s. Most cars didn’t even have rear seat belts so letting your kids rattle along on a bed of straw and cow pats was seen as absolutely fine.

I have other happy memories attached to these Land Rovers too, like using a borrowed 110 to act as support crew for some mates doing an intense 24-hour walk across the Brecon Beacons and taking a break in balmy evening sunshine to eat fish and chips off the usefully flat bonnet, or acting as wedding chauffeur for an old friend whose new wife wanted nothing more than to be driven away from the church in a ‘proper’ Land Rover. This sort of stuff lives with you, and the car was an important part of it.