Quite right Marin!
the "standard" farm gate in Britain in the 40s was 10 feet. Naturally
there were many that were not standard size.
John and Muddy
"Faure, Marin" wrote:
>
> 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 : Sat Jun 30 2001 - 12:22:12 EDT