A Rare Wood & Pickett Range Rover From 1971

This unconventional searching Assortment Rover is a period of time custom made from the prestigious Wooden & Pickett. At first look it seems like a auto from a 1970s sci-fi film, but it was actually focused at Britain’s wealthy and famous – and it proved extremely well-known.

The Range Rover experienced develop into an pretty much de facto “country car” for the rich in Britain following its introduction. Some required more exclusivity and that is exactly where Wooden & Pickett arrived in, for a hefty cost they would give your Selection Rover a new deal with and a luxuriously appointed interior.

Fast Information – The Range Rover By Wooden & Pickett

• Wooden & Pickett started off out in 1947 when coachbuilders Invoice Wooden and Les Pickett still left their employment at London coachbuilders Hooper to start off their individual undertaking – nevertheless it would not be until the 1960s that Wooden & Pickett Ltd was officially launched.
• The Mini had been produced in 1959, it swiftly grew to become a motoring icon with a slew of celebrity proprietors who typically needed their cars provided a very little far more flair – British coachbuilders Radford started constructing custom made luxurious Minis and Wood & Pickett adopted before long immediately after.
• After the launch of the Assortment Rover in 1969 Wood & Pickett started supplying luxury personalized versions of it, and they had been selling virtually as fast as they could build them.
• The company would afterwards do the job with Harrods on a Harrods Assortment Rover and with Land Rover by themselves on the “Vogue” Selection Rover.

The Selection Rover Arrives

The first Range Rover was a single of the most consequential 4-wheel drives at any time introduced, it was among the the initially of the luxury SUVs together with the Jeep Wagoneer from throughout the pond. Nowadays the luxury SUV marketplace is valued in the billions of pounds but back again in the 1960s it was a new and nearly completely untapped genre.

The Wooden & Pickett Range Rover is right away recognizable by its slatted entrance grille that handles the headlights. This is the situation the auto was in when it was not long ago uncovered.

The challenge to make a more lavish Land Rover experienced really begun back in 1951, just four decades soon after the launch of the iconic Collection I. It was to be referred to as the “Road Rover” and the prototypes provided much a lot more saloon car like comforts than their Series Land Rover siblings.

Finally the job would be shelved in 1958 even so it was reanimated in 1966 by Spen King and Gordon Bashford, with the first prototype unveiled just a yr later in 1967.

This new vehicle was provided the title “Range Rover” to retain the link with Land Rover, and it had a steel ladder frame chassis, coil springs and dwell axles entrance and again, disc brakes, a Rover 3.5 liter V8 engine, and a considerably additional high-class interior than Land Rover proprietors ended up employed to.

Wealthy consumers would buy virtually all the Variety Rovers that have been remaining built after its release in 1969, with numerous applying as a region car or truck or an estate wagon. Their appreciation of the better driving posture and at ease in good shape out saw much more and additional of them staying utilized for common city transportation, a pattern that carries on to this day.

The Selection Rover inside was upgraded by Wood & Pickett, with new seats, further wood panelling, and a variety of other refinements.

The Range Rover is now in its fifth technology and it stays a single of the most popular and influential luxurious SUVs in the world.

Wooden & Pickett – Luxurious Minis + Selection Rovers

Wood & Pickett was founded by Invoice Wooden and Les Pickett in 1947, while the enterprise was not formally formed until finally the 1960s. The two males had learned the coachbuilding trade working for Hooper in advance of location out on their own.

In the 1960s the British coachbuilding company Radford branched out and started building luxurious versions of the Mini, a auto that had come to be a cultural icon that was pushed by anyone from nurses and schoolteachers to members of The Beatles.

These Radford Minis produced a cult adhering to and were shortly emulated by other coachbuilders, like Wood & Pickett. Immediately after the release of the Assortment Rover the crew at Wood & Pickett took the Radford Mini strategy and developed luxurious Variety Rovers which grew to become an immediate feeling with the wealthy elite in Britain.

Power is offered by the venerable Rover V8, an all-alloy engine that was based on the previously Buick 215 V8 from the early 1960s.

The company would later on perform carefully with luxury section store Harrods on the Harrods Assortment Rover, and they would operate with Selection Rover specifically on the high-close Vogue product.

Wood & Pickett is however in small business today generally presenting quality pieces for common Minis.

The 1971 Wooden & Pickett Range Rover Proven In this article

The car you see right here is just one of the uncommon early surviving Wooden & Pickett personalized Array Rovers from pretty early in the Vary Rover’s generation run – it had only been launched 3 many years before.

This example has a significantly uprated interior with leather bucket seats, a substantially enhanced dashboard, air-conditioning, and walnut wood veneer. On the exterior it’s fitted with custom alloy wheels and the distinct Wooden & Pickett Vary Rover front conclusion.

It now clearly requires a restoration, however provided the wild recognition of these early two-door Selection Rovers it’ll most likely be snapped up and offered the rebuild it deserves.

If you’d like to examine much more about it or sign-up to bid you can pay a visit to the listing here on Historics Auctioneers.

Visuals courtesy of Historics Auctioneers

Articles that Ben has created have been coated on CNN, Preferred Mechanics, Smithsonian Magazine, Road & Track Magazine, the official Pinterest site, the official eBay Motors blog, BuzzFeed, Autoweek Magazine, Wired Journal, Autoblog, Equipment Patrol, Jalopnik, The Verge, and lots of far more.

Silodrome was established by Ben back again in 2010, in the several years considering the fact that the site has developed to develop into a environment leader in the substitute and classic motoring sector, with well in excess of a million month-to-month visitors from around the earth and quite a few hundreds of thousands of followers on social media.