Land Rover Scrapbook Daily Mail Review

Land Rover Scrapbook - Daily Mail, Saturday, January 12, 2008

"Just as Land Rover (along with Jaguar) is set to be bought up by the Indian engineering conglomerate TATA, in its 60th anniversary year, along comes the ideal book for admirers of this cherished company.  Land Rover Scrapbook by Mike Gould, gives an insider's account of the twists and turns of the world's most famous 4X4 manufacturer.

The former Land Rover executive, who spent over 30 years with the company, takes us from its origins as a post-war means of emulating America's ubiquitous Jeep - using non-rationed aluminium instead of rationed steel - through to its take-over, first by Germany's BMW and then by Ford.

But it goes back even further, to the origins of the bicycle-maker and then the car maker, Rover.

It's a big, sumptuous book full of fascinating photographs, documents, advertisements, ephemera and snippets about the life of the firm whose machines have seen action on the plains of Afghanistan and the posh streets of Mayfair.

The book is also full of chatty gossip which helps breathe life into the story.  And instead of just concentrating anorak-style on the vehicles, it highlights some of the characters who have shaped the company.

Having dealt at close quarters with many of them - from designers to chief executives - over the past decade or so, I feel well placed to recommend this as a brilliant way to get a full-bodied flavour of some of the intrigues and shenanigans that went on behind the scenes.

There's plenty of gossip and even a smattering of the Profumo sex scandal of the 1960s.  Its bold full colour format, with more than 500 illustrations over 160 pages, makes it a perfect coffee table book.  One photo even shows Winston Churchill standing alongside one of the first Land Rovers in 1948.