Something piqued my interest when I was walking down the street in Slim River town. I saw a Land Rover with a Tooley Electro Mechanical batch on its tailgate.
The now defunct English company from Church Street, Earl Shilton, Leicester used to do conversions for Land Rover vehicles.
Vehicle owner and durian seller Halim at first thought I was examining the durians he was selling from the back of his vehicle.
He was naturally happy when he found out I was a former Defender 110 owner. I wrote and directed a couple of television commercials for the Defender and Discovery some years ago. As such, I know a bit more about the series than the average guy.
I also attend and photograph the Rainforest Challenge International Offroad Competition almost every year. Even though it was a chance encounter, me and Halim ended up talking shop for a long while and became friends.
Halim promised to take me to some secret off-road tracks in the jungles off Slim River and Sungkai in his other 4WD.
Further north in Kampar and Ipoh, there are several workshops and dealers specialising in refurbished Land Rovers.
Of course, there is also the world’s largest fleet (estimated at over 7000 at one time) of mostly ramshackle and heavily-modified Land Rovers at the vegetable farms up in Cameron Highlands.
Jaguar Land Rover decided to stop producing the iconic Defender model come December 2015. It marks the end of an illustrious era for the famous utility and military vehicle launched in 1948.
The successor to be launched in 2018, was shown earlier as the Land Rover DC100 (Defender Concept 100) and I must say the planned replacement looks really awesome.
Sony Alpha a7R, ISO 100, f7.1, 1/320 sec.
