British car shows run the full spectrum of automotive self-seriousness. At one end: concours Jaguars, Rolls Royces, and Austin Healeys gleaming in the sun under their protective covers, owners hovering nearby with soft cloths. At the other end: the Land Rover section.
The Land Rover section was known as the “Land Rover ghetto.”
We did our best to arrive muddy. If you had a Series Land Rover and you showed up to a car show in pristine condition, you were doing it wrong. The point of a Land Rover is to go places other vehicles don’t go and come back dirty and working. A clean Land Rover at a show is a philosophical contradiction.
So on the way to the show, we’d take the trucks off-road. Get them muddy. Show up with dirt in the wheel wells and brown streaks on the aluminum body panels. Park in the ghetto. Wave at the Jaguar owners.
That’s also how I became a regular at British Pacific — the Land Rover shop in old downtown Pasadena. They supported my habit, and I supported them financially in return, which is how that relationship works. British Pacific occupied its building in old Pasadena for years. The building is now a fancy restaurant, which is what happens to everything good eventually.
The 1965 Land Rover 109" Station Wagon — “Kung San,” named for the Kalahari bushmen who appeared in “The Gods Must Be Crazy” alongside a Series I Land Rover called The Antichrist — appeared in a Four Wheeler Magazine article. I have a framed copy somewhere. That was peak Land Rover ghetto prestige: your truck in print, photographed at a show it arrived to dirty.
The Jaguar owners had beautiful cars.