How did this happen?

In April of 1996, my wife and I purchased a Land Rover Discovery. I instantly fell in love with the marque. My parents had a ’62 Land Rover Series IIA 88″ hard top in the late ’80s, and I loved that one, too. I had test driven the Disco when it came out in ’94, and thought it was great, but my Toyota 4Runner was still pretty new then. When my stepson came to live with us in December of ’95, we knew we needed a bigger car, so the Disco was it.

Oh my God!  He’s lost it!

I then started surfing the web for Land Rover info, and joined the Land Rover Owner mailing list, where I found there was lots of support for the old Land Rover series vehicles. What can I say? I just got the bug. We really needed to get my wife a new car, I got this nutty idea: I’d buy an old Series Land Rover, and she’d get the Disco. In July, after years of driving yuppie cars, I purchased Rosencrantz, my 1965 Land Rover Series IIA 88″ Station Wagon for use as my daily driver. Here is a pointer to the “For Sale” message.  After figuring out as best I could that it was an OK vehicle, I flew to Denver, where the PO–Ted Mindt– met me, and I drove it to Boulder, where I left him, and then headed home to Palo Alto, California. That was quite a trip.

But Wait!  There’s More

In early January of 1998, my wife (a.k.a. The Mad Scientist) was looking through the local classified adds and saw a Range Rover for sale for a good price.  She asked me if that’s what I wanted, and I used that opportunity to tell her about Chris’s Dream 109.  Here’s the basic outline:
Start with a basket case 109 (basically a vin and some body panels)
Add one Designa Coil Chassis
Add one modern Rover tranny/xfer case (LT77 or R380)
Add one RPI 3.5l V8
Redo the interior to make it OK for long trips (new seats, upholstery, LaSalle headliner)
Voilla!  Excellent expedition mobile

The problem with all this was that since The Mad Scientist had seen what I’d done with the IIA, she believed that I’d really do this if given the chance.  So, in the interests of keeping me out of the garage for the rest of my life, she said:  “It sounds like you want a 110″.  I said that that’s basically what I wanted, but it was a lot of money for a used car (I was seeing ads for 110s in the $45K range).  She suggested we just look around and see what we could get one for.  Blair Peterson had recently purchased a 110 in Half Moon Bay California for a fairly reasonable price, and had found several others for which the owners didn’t want an arm and a leg.  On February 6, 1998, I bought Mehdi Saghafi’s excellently maintained 70k-mile ’93 NAS 110.  OH MY GOD.  That car is simply brimming with Elvis. In Blair’s words “It drives itself off-road”. We had a blast at the ’98 Joe Lucas Notarally in the Mendocino National Forest.  Now I’m itching to SafariGard it so I can take it with my buds on the Rubicon Trail this summer.

Now She’s Lost It!

After our 4th of July trip in 1998, Leslie (my better half, a.k.a. The Mad Scientist), told me that her VW Cabrio was too small, and that she wanted her own Land Rover to wheel (we were in the process of ditching the Disco at the time).  About two weeks later, I noticed that Land Rover Redwood City in Redwood City, CA had three ’97 D90s and a ’95 D90SW for sale.  We test drove a Beluga Black D90 ragtop with diamond plate on the wings.  For various reasons, this dealership was on our shit list, so I didn’t think TMS would actually buy a car from them.  After the test drive (right when she was supposed to say “more in sorrow than in anger…”), TMS said “Let’s get it!”.  So, we did.  It’s not like I hadn’t been hankerin’ after a D90 since I first saw one or anything.  It’s 1997 #0921, and had 7300 miles on it when we picked it up.  It has:
Diamond plate wing top protectors
Safari Cage w/ top
ZF automatic transmission (as do all ’97 NAS D90s)
Air conditioning
Land-Rover brush guard
Hella 3000 aux lamps

We’ve since installed:

Desert Rover rear quarterpanel protectors
Desert Rover sliders
Diff protectors
Front skid plate
Cobra 75 WS ST CB Radio

The Black & White Defenders look cool (if a bit ostentatious) sitting in the driveway.