Our recently purchased 1978 Series 3 – with just 1,540 miles from new reminded us of the lowest mileage Series 3 we ever purchased.
The story goes WAY back to 2nd October 1980
The ITV Telethon events (1988, 1990, & 1992) originated from the “Thames Telethon (1980 & 1985) – which ran in the Thames (London) region only.
Our point of interest is the 1990 Telethon event.
The event took place at the NEC in Birmingham and was televised over 27 hours across Sunday 27th May, and Monday 28th May.
Two teams were assembled – each team consisted of 8 members – One team was from the Lincolnshire Land Rover dealer – James Duckworth and son, and the other team was made up with members from the Royal Army ordnance Corp. (RAOC) and Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers (REME)
Each team was tasked with building Series 3 Land Rovers – From brand new parts – supplied by Land Rover.
The two teams completed their Land Rovers almost simultaneously, but it was the Duckworth team who first drove their vehicle forwards – signalling the clock to stop – 13 hours, 29 minutes and 16 seconds !!
At the end of the event, both Land Rovers were sold off – James Duckworth purchased the Land Rover their team had built and it ended up on display in their showroom for the next 10 years.
The Land Rover was purchased by us here at Land Rover Centre in the year 2000. By this time, DVLA had been persuaded to issue an age related (1990) registration number – following intervention from Land Rover to confirm that the Land Rover had been built from all new parts.
This made these two Land Rovers the very last Series 3’s built – some 5 years after production proper had ceased in 1985.
If you keep your old Land Rover magazines – dig out the July 1990 edition of LRO to read the full article.
G826 AVL – arrived by transporter and was put on display in OUR showroom – with 36 (Thirty six) miles on the clock !!
It was sold to a UK enthusiast in 2002, and then bought back and exported to the middle east in 2004 – with just 750 miles on the clock !!
