Date: Tue, 10 Apr 2001 08:14:52 -0500
From: "cde3" <cde3@mindspring.com>
Subject: LRO: RE: Marin Faure
>If you are bored (as I am) or offended by Marin Faure's e-mails, do what I
do. Have all of them directly deposited into their own folder which goes
directly into the recycle bin.
Sounds like a good solution. I'm sorry if I've offended anyone on the
list as that wasn't my intention. But the subject of what's a Land Rover
and what isn't escalated to the point where it became more an exercise
in semantics than a useful discussion, and I'm certainly largely to blame
for that. The stuff on youth was an entertaining (but not to everyone,
I guess) sideline, but that, too, got out of hand, for which I, again,
was largely responsible. So I'm sorry for getting people wrapped around
the axle on what didn't seem to me to be very big deals.
When I started participating in this list a few years ago, it seemed to
be largely made up of people who were interested in keeping their Series
Land Rovers running more or less in original form. As this is what I am
interested in, too, and is what I've been doing for almost three decades
now, I found the list a useful exchange of information. The list has changed
dramatically over the last year or so, to the point where it now seems to be made up
mostly of people who are interested in modifying their Land Rovers to suit their
purposes. That's okay, of course. But with a dwindling interest in the marque
as built, I suppose it's natural for someone who is interested in the vehicles as
they were designed to express some frustration. Judging by the reaction of the
"new" list membership, I guess I went too far in expressing that frustration. So
I'm sorry for upsetting so many of you.
Those of us in the US who bought Land Rovers back in the "old days" of the
'60s and '70s got used to being almost totally self-reliant outside of finding a
parts source. There was no internet, no mailing list, and pretty much no
communication between people who had Land Rovers unless you happened
to live near someone who had one. For help, you called the few people who
were selling parts back then or a Land Rover representative. Of course the
Land Rover reps were gone after 1974. Those of us who ran Land Rovers
back then (and there were a fair amount of folks who did; I'm certainly not some
sort of rare breed in that respect) learned a lot about the vehicles in the course of
keeping them going day after day. That's useful information to someone with a
stock Land Rover, but that knowledge is of dwindling value today, at least in the
US.
I understand the Toyota FJ40 folks are undergoing the same shift, from
driving and maintaining the vehicles as built to heavily modifying them to
suit the owners' needs or desires. I'm sorry to see the same thing happening
to Land Rovers, but I guess it's inevitable as parts become harder to get and
people try to make a forty-year old design cope with today's traffic conditions.
I can certainly understand the frustration of trying to drive a stock Land Rover
in traffic today, as I am in that boat myself.
I will continue to maintain my Series as-built, and if I see a question on the list
that I think I can help answer, I'll do so. I'm not reversing my opinion on what's
a Land Rover and what's a hybrid, but it's certainly not productive to argue a
point that has no meaning or importance anymore for most Land Rover owners.
___________________________
C. Marin Faure
(original owner)
1973 Land Rover Series III-88
1991 Range Rover Vogue SE
Seattle
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