As a kid I went to a few 4x4 rallies with my dad who went through a stage of being Landrover mad and had a couple. There was usually some sort of off-road course, I remember one had a small river crossing which was attempted by many owners in various vehicles, Land/Rangerovers, G Wagons, Lada Nivas British and foreign Army type stuff, most succeeded to get around the course except the brand new bull-barred Subaru brought by a Subaru dealer which got it's bull bars pulled off by a Landrover trying to pull it up the river banking lol.

Anyway, used to see all sorts of 4x4s and various takes on Landrovers such as forward control models. Recently I saw an unusual looking Transit van filling with petrol at a garage in Mexborough (near me), suspension seemed raised and could see it was 4wd, got talking to the owner who reckoned he'd had it built like that by brand new as a one-off by a specialist firm. I haven't seen much else in the way of special model Rangerovers (e.g. no forward control models), although have seen unusual Classics with extra long wheelbase, big Yank diesel / petrol engines years ago and a few years ago I fixed a (I think the owner called it) Bobcat(?), very short cutdown wheel base Rangerover. Out of interest, what strange models are out there?

Simon

A friend of mine has a Bobcat. It's a Classic chassis cut down to fit a D90 trayback body. It was originally built as some sort of off road recovery vehicle with winches front and rear and a crane in the back. It still has the winches but the back now has a booze locker and mainly carries game.
Fun thing though. It had a 3.5 v8 on carbs but that popped and it now has a cammed 4.6, still on carbs.

There are some very odd range rover hybrids out there because the chassis makes it possible. I saw a thread once where someone put an BMW e30 cabriolet shell onto a range rover chassis. God knows why!

Like everything else, what used to be used as regular, if slightly offbeat, daily transport is now reduced to being bought out for the odd Classic car show or rally. That's where you'll find the Forward Controls and assorted other ex-MoD stuff. I found a Carmichael 6 wheel fire engine Range Rover Classic recently and I have a feeling Luton airport still has one as a rapid response unit.

Ah I remembered the Bobcat name then...
The one that was here was on high suspension and bigger than Rangerover wheels/tyres, had an LPG tank fitted but most of the LPG system had been removed or was broken and it wouldn't run on petrol either, was trailered here before the new engine had run more than maybe 2 minutes and before the owner had seen it running. There was a dispute between the engine builder (one of my customers) and the owner (yet to become my customer) who accused him of building an engine that wouldn't run, they agreed that if I could show the engine running nicely the owner would foot the bill for trailering or if I couldn't get it running the engine builder would remove the engine and refund, a deal I suppose the owner couldn't lose on. I found the petrol system was damaged due to bits of silicone someone had used to seal the petrol pump to the tank had entered the tank, fouled up the injectors and pressure regulator, none of which was the engine builders fault. I got the engine running nicely on LPG supplied by gas from an R90 fitted on a Jeep parked alongside it (Jeep idling on petrol to keep the R90 hot).. Took a video of that and sent it to both with a write up, which meant the engine builder was relieved of any blame and led to the owner deciding to get me to make it run LPG only, fitting some new and reconnecting some old LPG bits.

Maybe someone should have advised the cab owner he could just have cut the roof off the P38 and had a boat canopy maker make a roof for wet weather! I suppose you could mount a shed on the chassis, maybe not very unique as there are shed to vehicle conversions out there, though none I've seen on a Rangerover chassis. How about anything that might be considered an officially made model along the lines of the old forward control Landrovers?

Land Rover Special Vehicles will build you whatever you want on whatever chassis you want if you ask them nicely but quite a few oddball vehicles use Land Rover chassis of some description, whether Range Rover, Defender or Discovery, as very few vehicles have a separate chassis these days so it makes them an ideal base to start with.

Sorry I didn't acknowledge your post before my last post in my last Gilbert, posts crossed.
Interesting stuff, so if LRSV will build whatever people want (and probably built the Transit I mentioned) what other one-offs are we collectively aware of?

LRSV built my car as it was ordered by old bill to a specific spec, they also built things like the Autobiography where you chose the paint, interior, spec, etc so not a run of the mill, straight from the production line spec. Then they would have done other special orders like armoured versions and anything that the MoD ordered, such as the Wolf like this.

The transit will have been a County conversion. They are a factory-affiliated conversion company that have been doing conversions on transits for years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Transit#County_4x4

Lots of them were built for the likes of Scottish Power, who use them as utility vehicles to access infrastructure in more inaccessible areas up north.