Land Rover Series 1 Club star in BBC’s Coast
This week, we caught up with Michael Bishop from the Land Rover Series 1 Club to find out more about his involvement in this Sunday’s BBC Coast program that takes a look at the Anglesey connection with the Land Rover.
Q. How did you get involved with the filming of the BBC Coast episode?
My involvement with Coast came about from my research into my book on Land Rover’s first engineer, ‘They Found Our Engineer’, and the story of Arthur Goddard. The BBC Coast researchers got in touch with Roger Crathorne at Land Rover as they wanted to know what new things had recently been discovered in the vehicles history and then they gave me a call. They also asked what knowledge we had of Red Warf Bay on Anglesey in Wales and how Land Rover’s Technical director Maurice Wilks had come up with the idea for the Land Rover in 1947, which Roger and I were able to help with.
For the filming, we decided to use R16 as the vehicle as a running chassis on the beach which was a nice touch as it had spent most of its life at the Land Rover factory. It’s the first Land Rover that Roger drove as an apprentice in the early 1960’s.
The filming was great fun. Land Rover took old No1, or ‘Huey’ out of the museum at Gaydon as well. The Coast team were fantastic.
See Mike’s photos taken during filming on Facebook.
Q. How did your interest Land Rover vehicles start?
My interest in Land Rovers comes from a desire to explore my uncle’s farm as a teenager, once I found the tractor on the farm too slow. I bought my first Land Rover, a 1950 model when I was 14 and had her back on the road at 18. In that time I discovered what a fascinating history the Land Rover had and began collecting the earliest and rarest models. The special vehicle in my collection is a 1948 Pre Production R16 which was the 16th Land Rover built of the first 48 made as a test and development programme and is co-owned with my good friend Julian Paton. My other rare one is a 1950 Mobile Welder, 1 of only 5 known to exist.
Q. Can you tell us more about the Land Rover Series 1 Club?
The Land Rover Series 1 Club has been going since the late 1970’s and is for anyone interested in the Series 1 models produced from 1948 to 1958. The club is also the largest ‘traditional’ Land Rover club of around 2500 members. The club communicates to its members through the club magazine ‘Legend’ which is published about 5 times a year and covers both technical and social sides of the club. The clubs forum is also very busy and has a strong regular presence for any questions. The forum can be found at www.lrsoc.com
The club has many regular meetings and road runs for people and ‘area reps’ in various parts of the UK and the world. We organise local runs and social events, being either a simple local drive or adventurous off road trips.
The episode of Coast broadcasts on BBC Two (except Northern Ireland (Analogue), Wales (Analogue) on Sunday 10th July 2011 at 21:00. Sunday 10th July 2011 at 21:00 BBC HD and Tuesday 12th July 2011 at 00:00 BBC HD.
