My first vehicle, purchased when I was 15/16, after years of reading Land Rover Monthly and poring over the articles, was a Land Rover Defender pickup. A 300 tdi to be specific. I drove that truck everywhere, right up until I left for University and had nowhere to park it. Unfortunately, upon my return from Uni, I found that it had a 12 inch long hole along the chassis rail and at that point in my life I was flat broke and without the tools or facilities to make the necessary repairs myself. It took me a long time to accept that I needed to sell it but eventually I had to. Then came the withdrawal symptoms… Land Rovers get into your blood stream and it was not long before I was feeling desperate for another. It took a few years to build up some funds, but when I felt that I had enough, I started looking. This time, I didn’t want just three seats though, as I had discovered that to be a bit of a nuisance. I decided that what I really wanted was a Range Rover Classic, however as soon as I started looking, I realised that while in my LRM reading days as a teenager, classic Range Rovers were ten a penny in the classifieds, often for as little as £500, these low prices were now far more rare. I started browsing ebay motors and came across this Range Rover, just a couple of miles down the road from home and only £750. I bought it with a few months of MOT remaining, however my purchasing assessment had indicated that there was a lot of body rust that would need attention. I borrowed a welder from my friend and thus began my first major vehicle restoration… Believe it or not, but most of the welding was done using TIG, a process that I had never used before, was doing outside, with rusty metal and upside down in footwells and under sills… A baptism by fire if ever there was one! I got pretty good at it by the end though!