My old girls

The Range Rover was 40 on 17 June, which is cause for congratulation even if relations with the three I’ve owned were not uniformly harmonious.

They were all what are now called Classics and in good condition would be appreciating assets. The first, a 1972 two-door, accompanied me to South Africa where it suffered a mysterious, unheralded engine seizure. Shipped back to Britain, it was given a brand-new engine transplant, sold to friends to revive my finances and taken by them to Angola where it spent months in a container, undocked. When eventually it landed, a lorry drove into it. After more months waiting for parts it was sold to someone who drove it over a landmine. RIP.

The second was an old dog on which I spent a fortune and which I was struggling to sell when someone stole it. The insurance paid up, then the police found it and invited me to inspect it. I viewed the trashed remains and walked away, grateful for the payout. Before it could be recovered by the insurance company it was stolen again and the police interviewed me to check that I hadn’t nicked it back for myself. As if.

The third was my favourite, a 1993 four-door with fuel injection and the (normally) trusty 3.5 V8 bored out to 3.9. I ran it for a couple of years on LPG until the engine developed ‘porous block’ — hot spots in the cylinders that led to coolant loss. After a failed repair, we parted. I’ve wondered ever since whether it was the LPG that caused hot spots in those thinned-out cylinder walls.

The modern Range Rover has put on weight — unsurprisingly at 40 — and thanks to investment by previous BMW and Ford owners is a very different proposition.