Cool & Vintage

25/10/2026

The Land Rover was designed to make itself useful. In doing so, it left very little between the people inside and the landscape around them.

That remains a beautiful way to travel.

24/10/2026

Cotswolds. Details of construction.

Land Rover Series IIA.
Rover 4.6 V8.

17/10/2026

Land Rover Series 2A, Rover V8 4.6

10/10/2026

Roth’s Land Rover Stage One V8

09/10/2026

The time it takes to make things properly.

02/10/2026

The character will remain. The story continues.

26/09/2026

25/09/2026

A Land Rover Called Pops
“It was battered, unloved, but original-and incredibly well documented.” That’s how Alfie describes the 1973 Land Rover Series Ill 88-inch he and his father found on a farm close to home in Bedfordshire. It hadn’t moved for years. One half shaft had snapped, the engine wouldn’t run and decades of dents, patches and scars covered the aluminium body. Despite its condition, its history had survived intact. The original bill of sale was still there and the paperwork revealed it had had just two owners in more than fifty years. “It deserved another chapter.”
The plan was simple enough: get it running, explore the local green lanes and enjoy an old Land Rover. But reality turned into something much bigger. Over five months, Alfie rebuilt virtually every mechanical component himself-engine, gearbox, axles, suspension -mounting everything onto a new chassis while deliberately preserving the original bodywork. Every dent stayed. Every repair patch stayed. Every unanswered question stayed too. Including the bullet holes.
“We’ve got no
idea where they came from,” he laughs. “They look like air r***e shots. Maybe the farmer was doing a bit of target practice one evening when he got bored. We’ll never know.”
The Land Rover is known simply as Pops. The name came on its very first proper adventure, a trip through Wales, when the exhaust began popping spectacularly every time they rolled downhill. “It just seemed to fit.” Behind the front seats, the original hand crank still travels everywhere with them, alongside a small toolkit and a blanket. They’re practical objects, but also reminders that old Land Rovers ask something of their owners.
Since then, Pops has covered more than 5,000 miles across Europe: over the Alps, around Sardinia, through the Pyrenees, northern Spain and Portugal. It has crossed mountain passes, rescued a stranded car from a Cornish sand trap and never once seemed in a hurry. “It’s slow enough to make you enjoy where you are,” Alfie says. Ask whether he’d ever sell it and there’s barely a pause. “No. I’d never find another like him.”

Story by Igor Ramírez García-Peralta
Alfie Pauley Cordes