Well, I've seen it -- the British car I want to own next. Open,
exposed to the elements, 0-60 quoted by the factory in about 8
seconds, very traditional shape, an engine that I slaver over,
and best of all, a couple thousand pounds of towing capacity. :-)
Yes, I have seen the future, and it's a Land Rover Defender. The
December issue of Road & Track has a short piece on this creature,
with a staggeringly exciting shot of one in M**t* yellow with black
trim. It comes with the 3.9L version of the V8, a five-speed (!)
transmission with two-speed transfer case, solid front and rear
axles, and great big mud tires on pretty 15" alloy wheels. Me,
of course, I'd want to run 225-50VR15s on it and have the world's
only slammed Land Rover. (Hey, MJB, what class would that autox in?)
But I figure this would do it all. It's open, in fact it doesn't
even come with windows -- side curtains all 'round. The doors come
off with a screwdriver. That provides the ultimate in British
roadster feel for 1993. Yet it's got that V8 for good off-the-line
acceleration when you need it. It's got a glorious tradition
around the world, with an appearance (it's somehow difficult to
use the word "styling" when talking about a Land Rover) that's as
classic and unmistakable as a Jag or a Morgan. It's just about the
only vehicle I can think of (and I've thought of them all) that I
would enjoy driving when I wasn't using it to pull the race car to
the track. And if worse came to worst, if I rolled it I could always
pull the motor and tranny and drop them into an MGB-GT. (Hey, I know --
I'll leave the AWD in and paint a row of four octagons on the side, like
the circles on the original Audi Quattro! :-)
So I've decided that the Land Rover Defender is the next British car
I want to own. Only the $27,000 sticker price is holding me back at
present. Guess I'll have to wait for some suburban cowboy to buy one,
decide that he really likes the thermostatically controlled seat warmer,
CD player, climate control system, power windows, and tilt steering wheel
in the Isuzu/Nissan/Toyota product better than the lack of windows in
the LR, and I'll pick it up at a hefty discount in a year or so. Or
maybe I really *will* sell 50,000 copies of my book and I'll pay cash
for a Land Rover, a Volvo 850 Turbo wagon, *and* a new race car next year,
after making a down payment on a house in Los Altos big enough to keep
them all in the garage.
--Scott "Yeah, and monkeys may fly outta my butt" Fisher
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