At 11:02 AM -0400 7/5/01, Easton Trevor A wrote in response to Ian Stuart:
>Many NA Listers feel the same way. There are real LROs and posers. There are
>even posers in the leafer community.
>At 3:41 PM +0100 7/5/01, Ian Stuart wrote:
>>To us non-NorthAmerican listers, it's amusing/sad/worrying that so many
>>people seem so hell-bent on ignoring the later models.
Prior to the official NA introduction of the '87 Range Rover, the
Land Rover crowd in North American always seemed to me to be
iconoclastic, individualistic, eccentric and generally well out of
the main stream and mostly proudly so. After all, Land Rovers were
always relatively rare and an owner had to endure some hardships in
order to continue driving his truck. I always thought of myself as
being rather middle of the road but acquaintances would react with
laughing fits when I suggested that.
Easton is absolutely correct; there have long been all many of Land
Rover owners here... some just buying the image of world traveler and
explorer and those really applying them to their proper use. As with
the current crop, it was those early posers buying a new toy they'd
shed after a few years, who allowed many of us to get our first LRs.
So RRNA/LRNA begins marketing to the American public by representing
the Range Rover as a luxury SUV and status symbol. The price
certainly reinforced that concept. The majority of buyers readily
accepted that representation and really couldn't imagine the idea of
using such a vehicle for mug-slogging or rock crawling although I
suspect they found image appealing. The result was that there was
soon a large block of LR owners that were totally unable to relate to
a bunch of weirdos with greasy hands/clothes driving rather abused
looking faded "jeeps" that were more than ten years old.
"Who was that? Why the heck did that guy wave at us Debbie? Do YOU know him?"
So what we see here is the negative reaction to the apparent
rejection by the new-comers to our marque. Whereas in the UK every
farm has long had at least one LR in some state of decay and they're
pretty much everywhere you might go serving utilitarian needs. When
the RR was introduced in the UK, according to the press at the time,
they were bought up instantly by the moneyed Land Owners, the same
people who'd traditionally been buying Land Rovers. Soon there was a
waiting list for new RRs and the image was born. Farmers owned Land
Rovers whereas the Landed Gentry owned Rangies. Down at the village
pub it was fairly clear who belonged in which Rover.
The key is that the Range Rover owners in the UK likely understood
the connection to that funky old carcass out by the barn.
So, right or wrong, I think that long time North American Land Rover
owners legitimately learned their antipathy for the newbies with
clean hands.
Now let's get on with the important LRO issues: just which models of
Ferrari were quattro portes?
Gerry Mugele
*** "It's not on any map - true places never are." -- Mark Twain
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