Won't work in an SI, II, or IIa, but I found soon after taking delivery of
my SIII that a standard soft-drink cup will fit nicely in the parcel shelf
or whatever they call it between the instrument panel and the center
"pillar" thing that holds the emergency flasher switch (and on my SIII all
the electrical switches). The top of the cup sticks up high enough into
the vent cutout that it is prevented from tipping over by the top of the
vent, but you can still get it out to drink from it. This probably won't
work with the super-size cups that are popular now, but normal cups will
fit very nicely. I haven't tried it with a hard-plastic, hard-top coffee
cup, however, so I can't say if that will work or not.
Of course, this will only work if you don't use that part of the parcel
tray to store extra fuses, small box wrenches, screwdrivers, extra light
bulbs, bolts, washers, and other small bits and pieces you've found on the
ground after they've fallen off your vehicle.
If you really want a conventional (aka "real") cupholder in your Series but
want to keep your vehicle as "gen-u-wine Land Rover" as possible, you might
be able to incorporate the old-style Range Rover cupholder. I've installed
one in our '91 Range Rover, and it works quite well.
The '91 did not have a cupholder, other than a pair of worthless detents on
the underside of the cubby box cover. However, as our vehicle was built as
a Vogue SE, it does not have the cubby box cover used on the US vehicles
but a larger, deeper cover that incorporates a mobile phone holder in the
top (this was back when mobile phones were large, rectangular things). But
starting in '92 or thereabouts, Range Rovers could be fitted with a
side-by-side cupholder that sat down inside the cubby box. It was hinged,
so if you opened the lid you could also hinge back the cupholder to get at
stuff stored in the box underneath it.
Using this cupholder required that the cubby box lid be opened all the way,
a sort of dumb arrangement as that meant the top was hinged back into the
rear seat area where it could easily be ripped off the box by an errant kid
or something.
The mobile-phone top used in the Vogue SE didn't hinge back all the way
anyway, which made it impossible to use the cupholder if it was mounted in
its intended position inside the box. So I adapted the holder, which is
quite substantially made of heavy, matt-finish, black plastic by the way,
to mount externally on the rear of cubby box where it is easily accessible
by the folks up front but it does not protrude into the rear seat area.
The Range Rover holder is not just a circular rim such you find on many
vehicles these days, but has actual cup-like shapes with bottoms to hold
your cups, water bottles etc. So you can use them to hold things like
pens, a modern cellphone..... or spare fuses, small tools, and the bits and
pieces you find under your vehicle after they've fallen off.
If you can obtain one of these Range Rover holders- I assume they're still
available as spare parts- I would imagine you could easily figure out how
to mount it somewhere convenient in a Series.
________________________
C. Marin Faure
(original owner)
1973 Land Rover Series III-88
1991 Range Rover Vogue SE
Seattle, WA
marin.faure@boeing.com
faurecm@earthlink.net
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