|
Arthur’s responsibility was to design and to develop the vehicle, for production. Working under him were such Land Rover legends as Tom Barton and Frank Shaw (transmission) , Gordon Bashford (chassis) , Joe Drinkwater (engine) and
Sam Ostler (body design).
Goddard joined Rover in 1945 to work on tank engines and the war effort, but quickly transitioned at the war's end to car engines. In early 1947 Maurice Wilks dreamed up the Land Rover, and Goddard went to work on the vehicle. He oversaw a small team of engineers that included Tom Barton and Frank Shaw in the transmission department, Gordon Bashford on chassis development, Joe Drinkwater under the hood, and Sam Ostler, who was in charge of exterior design. Their finished product was ready the following year as Land Rover launched in 1948. As you can see above, Goddard's visit included a trip down memory lane taking an original Land Rover prototype through the drink on an original off-road test track near Solihull. Sam Ostler's body design was also very different, with more upright front wings that were easier to make by hand than the Centre-Steer's grace fully curved panels. It also had flat panels wherever possible, with galvanized cappings to add reinforcement - these were again much simpler to make than the design tried out on the Centre-Steer. But there were still traces of the Land Rover's Jeep ancestry for those who knew where to look: the only reason why the vehicle had an 80-inch wheelbase was that this had been the wheelbase dimension of its inspiration, the Jeep. Work on the engine fell to Joe Drinkwater. He had to adapt Rover's brand-new 4-cylinder engine, largely designed before the war by Chief Engine Designer Jack Swaine, to suit its new role in the proposed utility 4x4. In charge of transmissions was Tom Barton, a no-nonsense ex-railway engineer, and it was his job to draw up a two-speed transfer gearbox to bolt onto the existing Rover car gearbox and give the new vehicle crawler ratios for driving across rough terrain. On this he worked closely with Frank Shaw , head of the Transmissions team, who was also assigned to the 4x4 project. The fifth designer on Maurice Wilks's new team was Sam Ostler, whose job was to come up with the bodywork for the new vehicle. Maurice Wilks was the man who took a special liking to a friends ex-army Jeep, which he eventually purchased sometime in 1946. It was not until this Jeep broke down in the summer of 1947 that Maurice realised its real potential. He was the Technical Director for the then Rover car company working with his brother Spencer the companies Managing Director. His initial ideas were for an agricultural vehicle that could be used to plough fields and carry loads as well as having access to using the vehicles motor to drive other machinery or operate winches. During these tough times just after the war there were many restrictions on what manufacturers could produce in terms of numbers, and this new vehicle could aid there rather limited production at that time as it was designed for agricultural use. Maurice was able to convince his brother that this type of vehicle could be a great temporary production vehicle and help get them through the tough manufacturing restrictions at that time . The Idea was presented to Rover’s board and permission to go ahead with producing some pre-production prototypes was given in September 1947. Immediately Maurice set about getting a team of designers and engineers together to start work on Rover’s new agricultural vehicle. The team consisted of Robert Boyle , Gordon Bashford , Tom Barton Tom Barton, Frank Shaw , Joe Drinkwater and Sam Ostler, lead by Maurice himself. One of the first jobs to do was to get hold of some Willys Jeeps, which could be used to provide the necessary knowledge of how to build such a vehicle. They managed to purchase two vehicles, using their chassis to build upon for their first prototypes. These donor Jeeps provided the details needed to manufacture their own chassis as well as providing the vital information on how the 4?4 system worked. As mentioned earlier the original concept was meant to be a temporary production vehicle which would see them through the later part of the 1940’s. Because of this the design brief needed to be very strict in terms of the actual production costs requiring a very plain design with very little being spent on tooling. (Dymock,2006: 17) These manufacturing constraints meant that the prototypes could be built fairly quickly and within a year they produced the very first Land-Rover (hyphenated originally before becoming Land Rover almost a year later) a prototype known as the 1947 J-Model(‘J’ for Jeep). The 1947 J-Model used the original Jeep chassis, while they waited for their own chassis design to be completed, and housed a Rover engine and many other parts that they would have normally used on their Rover cars. This first prototype was rigorously tested and there were many changes made to this J-Model, which helped the team become very familiar with its 4?4 system, a vital part of the vehicles dynamics. Next came the 1947 the centre-steer prototype, which again used a donor Jeep chassis with Rover running gear and engine. This model used a centrally located steering wheel, hence the name, and hoped this design feature would reinforce the agricultural nature of the vehicle and help speed up the governments approval process. These first two prototypes once they had served their purpose were destroyed. Forty-eight pre-production prototypes were built soon after these mongrel versions, known as the 1948 Pre-Production Land Rovers. They incorporated the new Land Rover fabricated box section galvanised steel chassis frame and were built in their Solihull, Experimental Workshop. The aluminium body work itself was finalised on these prototypes as were the removable doors and canvas folding hood, setting the final look of of the all-new Land Rover. In the April of 1948, a 1948 Land Rover initial production was unveiled at the Amsterdam Motor Show and was an instant success. You can see images of the initial production model on this website |
| Âíåäîðîæíûå òðàíñïîðòíûå ñðåäñòâà (Land Locomotion – Mechanical Vehicle Mobility LL-MVM) Home |