A young Toby Savage spent many a happy weekend playing in the mud with Land Rovers and an Austin Champ
It is hard to believe in these days of high prices for anything labelled ‘classic’ that within most of our lifetimes there was a day when highly sought after 4x4s were actually cheap. I bought my 1948 Land Rover in 1974 for £85 and my pal, John Littlejohn, bought a 1966 Austin Champ for about £200 in the same year. Bearing in mind that the Champ was only about eight years old it represented a real bargain having enjoyed an easy life in the military and been sold offat auction as surplus to requirements. The country’s loss was John’s gain.
John and I grew up together in a village in West Leicestershire tinkering with scooters, motorbikes and cars. My family lived in an old farmhouse with barns and stables to stash all the bits in and I can’t bear to think of the things we dragged up to Nixon’s - the local scrap yard when we lost interest in them. A 1949 VW Beetle with cable brakes, a 1953 Slough-built Citroen 2CV to name but two that would be worth a fortune now. The traffic between us and Nixon’s was two way though, with a pair of 4.3:1 diffs from two Rover P4s finding their way into my Land Rover (…
