1999 Land Rover Defender 90 Td5 - fully restored/magazine featured

The icon that is the Land Rover. As much a part of British car culture as the Mini, the Jaguar E-Type or the Ford Escort - perhaps even more so.

In 1998, Land Rover conceived the Td5 (Turbo Diesel) engine. Famously designed in-house, carrying the name of ‘Project Storm’, it took a UK-based Land Rover engineering team five years of development before this new engine would meet all the Rover Group’s diesel engine requirements. Indeed, the Td5 engine was the very first five-cylinder diesel. At the outset of the project, the design team focused on reducing the overall running costs by extending the oil change intervals - the solution was to include both turbocharge and intercooling.

The introduction of the Td5 engine created the ultimate Defender. BMW, who owned Land Rover at the time, wanted to use one of their four-or six-cylinder diesels, as featured in the Freelander. However, as the Discovery’s engine bay was too short for the six-cylinder diesel, the Td5 project gained momentum. The Td5 engine is Land Rover’s last in-house diesel – a special fact not lost on the enthusiasts and collectors of the marque.

The car presented here is a no ordinary 1999 Land Rover Defender 90 Td5, far from it. Where do we start? ‘V970 FDV’ originally belonged to a member of the Bahrain Royal family It was bought new from Matford Land Rover of Exeter and was their personal vehicle on their dairy farm in Devon.

Our vendor started working for the family in 2015 and they became close friends. After a period, ‘V970 FDV’ became surplus to the family’s requirements and, knowing how much of a Defender fanatic our vendor was, gifted it to him. At the time, it was a great original example having covered only 27,000 miles. The ‘fanatic’ element came to the fore and our vendor decided it was such a good example to make ‘new’ again and, by his own admission, got a little bit carried away!

He says: “I started to strip the vehicle down and it became an obsession; I wasn’t going to be happy unless everything looked like new again. It was a project that took me 18 months to complete, dedicated only to that vehicle, working many days and evenings on it solidly. Every item on it was mechanically perfect being such a low mileage example, but it didn’t look new - it had to be replaced. I had a very good relationship with Stratstone Land Rover dealership in Cheltenham and only used genuine Land Rover parts.”

There are over £30,000 worth of receipts to go with it and that doesn’t include the £6,000 paint job.

The main elements of the work included: galvanising the original chassis and bulkhead (no welding or repairs required) and prepping to look ungalvanized, new wings, new bonnet, new doors (front & rear), new complete rear tub, new door cards, new seats, new mats, new seat box mat, new turbo, new alternator, new starter motor, new hoses, new steering wheel, new lights, new grille, new radiator, new intercooler, new discs and pads, new bearings, new brake calipers, new swivels, new ball joints, new brake pipes, new seatbelts, every nut & bolt is either re-plated or new, a rebuild of the differentials and a replacement of the plastic cylinder head dowels for new (and better) metal ones – you get the idea!

Basically, everything that he couldn’t make to look new, is new. Even the old-style BF Goodrich tyres are new, and were spec’d by the Princess from new, as the original build order list is in its extensive history file. So good, it was featured in ‘Land Rover Owner International’ magazine in an article entitled ‘Perfect Order’ (a copy of which is in the history file). In keeping with the rebuild, the level in which it has been it has been kept and stored is similarly fastidious, now with only c28,000 miles covered, it forms the centrepiece of our vendor’s Land Rover collection. Perfection, this really is it.