Lucky for me I couldn’t afford a Series in college, and bought a beater of Land Cruiser FJ60 instead. It was a logging foreman’s truck and had something like 248,000 miles on it. I dropped in another motor (165k on that one) and drove her everywhere, racking up about 340,000 miles or so. Nary a problem for a $2500 truck. Yes, that’s about what I spent in total.

Later I got a beater FJ40 and wheeled that one hard too. Both have outlasted my friends’ Series trucks, and don’t destroy gearboxes and rust away at the frame like these things. There’s a reason the Taliban and Somali pirates drive Toyotas….

The current ride is a ‘69 Chevy C10, which not-so-ironically has the same inline-six 235 that Toyota copied and dropped into Land Cruisers until 1992. Now that I can afford something better than a beater, the BJ40 is at the top of the list.

Great dealership just west of Boston that specializes in Defender’s (and other fine makes)

http://www.staufferclassics.com/pinzgauer_instock.php

Just the thing to drive around NYC.

http://www.pinzgauer.com/shpics.php?table=vehicles&idnum=102

When Eric Haney was the tech advisor and writer on the TV series, “The Unit” he was able to get two of them for the series. When it looked like the series was gonna get canned Eric snatched one and some asshole from the show has the other one. Eric told me when the guy who selected the vehicle for Delta was asked why a Puch – - he said, Eric, I tried like hell to break it but couldn’t.

I love the 110 but it’s always interesting to see what the pros use.

have you ever owned a defender or non-luxury focused rover? if not, you’ve either got no idea about the reliability of these vehicles, or you’ve got no idea how to even use a ratchet set. i replaced the entire suspension set-up on my ‘89 rover today in under two hours, springs, shocks and mounts. rovers are just as reliable as their owners….

It was one of the true loves of my life, and I still lament having sold it. Alas, the streets of New York were one area I would say Land Rover never intended the Series or Defenders to exist, not to say they couldn’t handle it.

i sold my ‘67 Land Rover 109 last year. i’ll get by with my ‘89 range rover for the time being. waiting for the bottom to fall out of the used defender 110 market. they only brought in 500 110’s to the US and 25 to Canada in ‘93. That was the only year they were sold new in the states. You can now import the 110’s from ‘83 & ‘84 from the UK though, so hopefully the prices will get more affordable.

They don’t call them the best 4×4 by far for nothing!