It doesn’t happen often, but every once in a blue moon I get an epiphany. In the normal run of my day something hits me like a bolt of lightning and I can’t immediately let it go. That happened today, and it relates to the Series Land Rover, so I figured I’d better vomit it out here.
It may not have entirely escaped your notice that I love the Series Land Rover, and particularly the Series III. We build a ton of them here at Autology, and always have, and that’s because of me. It’s not for money. Building Series Landys is not the best “business model,” but I don’t run Autology Motors like a business. We aren’t a car dealership, even though we are. We aren’t “custom builders,” even though we are. No, our work here is more of a passionate, self-sustaining, ever-evolving art project (more on that in a future post) than it is a business. Autology is an expression of me, and a reflection of me, good, bad, inspiration, exasperation, beauty, warts… everything. It’s not that I wouldn’t have it any other way - I literally can’t even conceive of another way. I am not perfect, and so Autology Motors isn’t perfect either, but we are authentic, I can assure you of that. And people seem to sense that authenticity, so I spend a lot of time talking to people who are as passionate and dogmatic and single minded as I am. And that means I am often asked for my opinion. My personal opinion on a car, or a color, or whatever.
You can probably see the danger here.
I sometimes struggle to explain my personal opinions, which are exactly that - personal. And I sometimes struggle to see the point in even trying, particularly when it comes to aesthetics. I mean, if you want your Land Rover painted Alfa Romeo “Verde Pino,” what difference does it make what I think? It’s your car, not mine. Do your thing! In other cases, it’s more clear cut. People ask me for my opinion on one type of car versus another, for example, and because I have driven all sorts of stuff I can see why they do. They aren’t asking for my opinion, so much, but more my insight. “How capable is a Range Rover Classic in off road conditions, compared to say… an early Defender?” Stuff like that. And Series Land Rovers come up in those of discussions a lot, because, well… we all know they are a little “limiting” when it comes to everyday usability. Stay with me, I’m getting around to the point.
The other day, a woman called me from the United States, and we were talking about building a Land Rover for her. It was a long, rambling conversation as usual, and we kept coming back to the question of “Series vs Defender.” She couldn’t decide. And she was smart and knowledgeable and savvy, which made the problem even worse. A Defender build is double the price, but is it double the car? She kept asking me things like: “It is worth it to spend the extra money for the Defender?” And my answer was: “No, it isn’t worth it to spend double the money on a Defender, because a Defender is easily twice as good as a Series III.” And that seemingly nonsensical, contradictory answer is when the moment of clarity came. That’s it. That’s my opinion on the two cars in a nutshell. Let me explain.
Why do we buy these cars? Series Land Rovers, Defenders, Range Rover Classics, old G-wagens, Land Cruisers, Jeeps, etc. Why do we own them and drive them in the first place? Why do we want one? Is it because they make total sense as vehicles? No. Is it because they are impossibly reliable? Nope. Is it because they provide a painless and flexible ownership experience? No. Dirt cheap? No. Efficient? No. Comfortable and refined? No. Better than a Toyota Tacoma in off-road conditions? No.
So why?
We buy them because they’re fun. They have soul. We buy them because driving them makes us laugh. Owning them makes us smile, inwardly and outwardly. We want to go out and have fun when we drive them. And a Series III’s inherent limitations make it more fun than the vastly more capable Defender.
I told her: “A Defender can cruise all day long at modern highway speeds, and a Series III can’t. A Defender is roomier inside, and more comfortable, while the Series III is a little more cramped. I can fit air conditioning to a Defender, so you can stay comfortable in all weather conditions, but that’s not true in a Series III. A Defender is a car you can drive every day, but you won’t want to drive a Series III every day, and that make it better.”
Why? Because although the Defender is much better in every way, a new BMW X5 it ain’t. It’s better at faking it as an SUV, and it’s more modern, but it still isn’t anything like an SUV and it still isn’t modern. But because a Defender is CLOSER to a BMW X5, and because you can use it more often and for more things, you will use it more often and for more things, and when you do you will be exposed to its shortcomings relative to other more modern, more refined vehicles. Or, to use a specific example, you will say to yourself: “Even though it’s raining out, I can drive my old Defender an hour and a half to the airport and pick up my mother, who is coming to visit me,” and you will drive your Defender an hour and a half on the highway, and you will pick your mother up at the airport in the rain, and at some point during that trip, probably sooner than later, you will realize how much the Defender sucks at stuff like that. It will do it, yes. But it will suck at it. It won’t be “fun,” and you won’t be smiling. And neither will your mother. You will think to yourself: “Yeeesh. I probably should have driven the X5.”
That doesn’t happen in a Series III.
No one drives a Series III an hour and a half to pick up their mother in the rain, except maybe me, and trust me, my mother knows this and probably visits a helluva lot less frequently as a result. No one commutes to work in rush hour traffic in a Series III. No one is under any illusions that it’s a real, proper car. They treat it like, I don’t know… like a Jet Ski. They take it out occasionally for one reason and one reason only. Because it’s fun. They only do things in it that it’s good at, and so it’s good all the time you are driving it. A Series Land Rover never sucks at anything because you will never ask it to do anything it sucks at.
It’s better because it’s worse. That’s the epiphany. That’s the bolt of lightning.
Oh, and in case you care? The woman ordered a Defender build. She wants the car to drive on the highway occasionally, mostly to get to places where she can explore off road. A perfectly reasonable need, and a Defender is the better choice for it. No harm, no foul. Someone smarter than me once said: “I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the best advice, then going away and doing the exact opposite.” We should all live that way.