Somewhere that looks like nowhere particularly special, amid a nest of workshops behind a petrol station on the A40 just to the west of Oxford, is a place where one of the most influential British cars ever designed – the Mk1 Range Rover of 1969 – is being brought back to life.
Kingsley Cars is the kind of place you need to see in order to really believe that it exists. Proprietor Damon Oorloff has nurtured it from personal obsession to burgeoning professional operation over the past 20 years. There are now a number of firms in the UK that offer a ‘remastered’ Range Rover, but Kingsley is the sort on which those others almost wholly depend, because it can handle the really important metalworking.
Oorloff runs it with a mixture of passion, compulsion, thinly veiled mania and expert skill for these much-loved aristocratic SUVs, and he expects nothing less of the 20something technicians he employs.
Kingsley offers a number of restored and restomodded Range Rovers, having most of what it needs to strip, weld, recommission, repaint and rebuild them on site; and it has just added a special version intended to comply with London’s Ultra Low Emission Zone.
The ULEZ Reborn Range Rover Classic is a fully recommissioned three-door Range Rover based on a donor car originally registered before 1981 (so that it qualifies for a historic vehicle tax classification and thus dodges the ULEZ levy). The price for one (from, ahem, £125,000) doesn’t include the donor car, but don’t worry if you haven’t got one: at the last count, Oorloff owned more than 450 old Rangies of various vintages, so he can find you one pretty easily.
この記事は Autocar UK の November 24, 2021 版に掲載されています。
7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、8,500 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。
すでに購読者です ? サインイン
この記事は Autocar UK の November 24, 2021 版に掲載されています。
7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、8,500 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。
すでに購読者です? サインイン
Rolls enters an era of expansion
New CEO predicts exciting future’ as factory gets extra capacity for personalisation
VW Polo gets five more years after dodging emissions bullet
THE VOLKSWAGEN POLO could be on sale for another five years, having been given a stay of execution by the relaxation of upcoming EU emissions legislation.
AUDI SQ8 E-TRON SPORTBACK
Four-up, luggage-laden, long-haul drives reveal its true colours
MERCEDES-AMG G63
Off-roader turned madcap performance car is given-shock! -hybrid technology
EX90 showcases Volvo's future
UK-bound, \"software-defined\" flagship SUV is a \"big step towards zero collisions\"
An Autocar Great Woman of a century ago
AUTOCAR RECENTLY HONOURED the female high-fliers of the British automotive industry at our annual Great Women awards ceremony.
VOLVO V90
Our resident estate fangirl asks an SUV-buying friend to explain herself
NEW WORLD ORDER
Audi is a past master of slick electric SUVs while Lotus is a class rookie. Can the new Eletre compete alongside the SQ8 E-tron? Matt Saunders decides
TURNED OUT NICE AGAIN
Cars have got bigger, heavier and more expensive in the electric era. Helpfully, this faithful recreation of the old Mini reverses two of those trends. Matt Prior drives it
Used EVS plummet to ICE price
Average two-to four-year-old EV now worth £16k while equivalent diesel is £18k