Why everybody (still) loves a Land Rover

"OFF-ROADERS are stupid and pointless," a friend suggested as we shot along the M6 somewhere near Stafford a fortnight ago. "You just don't need them."

All you need in an everyday car, he reckoned, is something cheap, comfortable, easy to look after and equipped with a healthy bit of oomph. Something, he reckoned, that's a lot like his turbodiesel Citroen Xsara. Anything with four wheel drive or knobbly tyres is just unecessary and expensive.

Seeing said mate utilise this argument - and win - hurt because I've always had a soft spot for 4x4s, and I don't mean the blinged-up, over-imposing "lifestyle" efforts from BMW and Audi either. I mean the off-roaders of the old school, the Jeeps, Isuzus and Shoguns with their unpretentious styling and obligatory Ifor Williams trailers. I especially like Land Rovers, particularly the proper ones which look like they've been styled on an Etch-a-Sketch. But having a soft spot wasn't winning an argument in the mildest winter we've seen in years.

Lukily, I found the answer I was looking for last weekend, when I ventured beyond my usual stomping ground into a place best known as The Countryside. There, there are hills and rivers and windy little lanes made muddy by the near-constant flow of tractors among them. Out there almost every house has a proper off-roader parked outside it, and when it suddenly started snowing I realised why.

After just a few hours The Countryside was no longer green and pleasant; it was like being trapped inside a Christmas card, only with more BBC Look North crews telling you off over the airwaves because you forgot to pack Ray Mears and a shovel into the boot. Naturally, I'd forgotten to bother with either.


With seven inches of the slippery white stuff to tackle my trusty old Rover did alright but I still wished it'd had the word "Land" in front of its name. Certainly, any Land Rover would have been better than the 11-reg SEAT Leon half a dozen of us had to push out of trouble, or the MINI Cooper which struggled to get over a humpback bridge without spinning its wheels, or the BMW 1-Series at the side of the A591 next to a driver who'd just given up trying.

On this cold, slippery, unforgiving day in The Countryside, nobody wanted the Porsches or BMWs the tourists had brought into the village the night before. But absolutely everybody wanted the 25-year-old Range Rover which was darting around the village completely unaffected. Like the local council's rather scabbier Defenders it was untroubled by the conditions, but it also exuded class in a way a brand-new X5 doesn't.

So off-roaders - proper ones at least - aren't stupid and pointless. Just ask anyone who lives in The Countryside.

RIP Cars of the Stars

I PITY the fool who didn't check out one of the north west's gems for car enthusiasts before it closed. Cars of The Stars, home of the A-Team van, is no more.

Not following? Cars of The Stars, hidden away in a quiet street in Keswick, was exactly what it said on the tin; a museum stuffed full not just with any old motors, but ones synonymous with the TV shows and films they're famed for appearing in. Weirdly, it was the only place in the world you could check out Knightrider and FAB 1 at the same time.

It was so successful that owner Peter Nelson, the former dentist who built up the eclectic collection pretty much from scratch, actually had to open a second museum on the other side of town just to house his cars from the Bond films. I said in this column last year that it was brilliant and you should all go, but you can't because when I went up last weekend I was greeted with a sign saying it had shut and all the cars were being moved to Florida. Whether you're into cars, celebrities or just Cumbrian tourist attractions, it's a sad day when Cars of The Stars closes.

I loved it because it was a museum with the personal touch; I will, for instance, never forget being shown around Mr Bean's Mini by Peter himself, who clocked me and my friends taking an interest in the only car I've ever seen being driven sucessfully via a sofa tied to the roof. It was, if you were up in that part of the world in the Nineties or Noughties, a place you wouldn't want to miss on a rainy day. Holiday visits to Cars of the Stars will be forever etched into my childhood.

What's more, I'm not even sure if Florida will particularly ‘get' what is still a collection with a peculiarly British twist. The Yanks would, for instance, love the Delorean from Back to the Future, but are they going to understand Del Boy's three-wheeled van?

There are, of course, lots of other utterly brilliant museums across the noth west which are well worth the day out, but it's a real shame that one of my particular favourites is being bundled off to the States, although I wish its charismatic owner well.

Best of British, Peter, and thanks for the memories.