totally agree with you Marin.
I've talked to some of the early developers, most notably Tom Barton, and
never once heard a farm gateway mentioned. It seems to be so important that
someone would have mentioned that they had taken it into account...
Mind you, I can show you gateways in Yorkshire that you can't get anything
more than a motorcycle through...
anecdote time: in one of James Herriott's books is the story of the gate -
the one that always 'attacked' James when he went to visit a certain farm.
The TV company liked this one and paid a carpenter/special effects man to
build such a gate.
Then they needed a place to film it so went out in the Dales looking for a
location. The first gate they came to attacked the production assistant...
Best Cheers
Frank
+--+--+--+
I !__| [_]|_\___
I ____|"_|"__|_ | / B791 PKV
"(o)======(o)" Bronze Green 110 CSW
----- Original Message -----
From: Faure, Marin <Marin.Faure@PSS.Boeing.com>
To: 'Land Rover Mail Group' <LRO@Works.Team.Net>
Sent: Friday, June 29, 2001 6:13 PM
Subject: LRO: Farm gate clearance
> Someone suggested the Land Rover was sized deliberately to
> fit through the farm gates in the UK. I suspect this was not actually
> a consideration. The Land Rover was sized to be the same as the
> Jeep it was based on, as well as the average width of other vehicles
> of that day. Vehicles on the whole were smaller and narrower
> in the 1940s than they are today. It had nothing to do with gate
> clearances, it was just the way vehicles evolved.
>
> I don't think farm gates placed any specific restrictions
> on the design of the Land Rover if for no other reason than vehicles of
> all sorts had been driven successfully through farm gates for decades
> prior to the appearance of the Land Rover. Just watch an episode or
> two of "All Creatures Great and Small" and you will observe period
vehicles
> of every ilk, from saloon cars to knacker's lorries, negotiating
> centuries-old farm gates with no problems. I've driven Defenders and
> Discoveries through farm gates in the Yorkshire Dales, the Lake District,
> and the Highlands on many occasions. While the gates themselves were
> generally less than 20 years old, the gaps in the stone walls had been
unchanged for
> ages. In virtually every case, there was plenty of clearance, even for
our
> Defender 130 Crew Cab.
>
> There is a lot of farm equipment that's much wider than
> a Land Rover, and there has been since before the Land Rover was
conceived.
> So I think trying to insert "farm gate clearance" into the
already-distorted history
> of Land Rover (in the US thanks in large part to Land Rover North
America),
> is not a good idea. I have never seen any reference to gate width as a
design
> criteria in any of the Land Rover history books and writeups I have, most
of
> which are fairly old and so were written much closer to reality than a
recent work
> which may elevate rumor to fact. I have seen quotes from the Land Rover's
developers
> in which they outlined what they wanted to do with the design. Nobody
said anything
> about making it through farm gates. They didn't have to, as all the
comparable sized
> vehicles, including the Jeep they were copying, already made it through
farm gates
> just fine. There are already enough bogus beliefs and theories floating
around about
> the Land Rover. Let's not add another one.
> ___________________________
> C. Marin Faure
> (original owner)
> 1973 Land Rover Series III-88
> 1991 Range Rover Vogue SE
> Seattle
>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Fri Jun 29 2001 - 18:47:58 EDT