Fredrik Johnander - Linkoping Sweden

1986 Land Rover Defender 90″ – LHD

Buying a ninety – by Fredrik Johnander

I started to plan for the import of a ninety in the mid-spring of 99, due to loosened regulation for import of cars to Sweden. The official sales of Land Rover 88 and 109 ceased during 1976 in Sweden due to exhaust emission control regulations and wasn´t brought back to the Swedish market until 1995. I´ve had a series III 109 station wagon earlier but this time I wanted a short wheelbase coil sprung Land Rover and therefore I set my eyes on the British market. One won´t go to Britain to save money then buying a car because the prices is similar to Sweden, but the selection of Nineties is much bigger in Britain.

I bought a few issues of Land Rover World and Land Rover Owner in order to get hold of some good companies who deals with a little bit older Land Rovers. I sent requests for stock lists by fax and E-mail to about twenty companies and got answers from most of them. I had one problem though, because the dealers was situated all over England and it´s hard to drive two cars back home. I decided to go by bicycle from Newcastle, there I was going to start after stepping off the ferry from Sweden.

The beginning of my journey – DFDS Ferry terminal in Gothenburg

In the beginning of June I bought the ferry tickets, one person with a bicycle to Britain and one person and a tall car back to Sweden, even if I had to go to Esbjerg in Denmark because the ferries to Gothenburg was fully booked. I even booked an appointment at the government institution, who handles the approval of imported cars and also the yearly approval like the British MOT-stations. A few weeks later I told the Land Rover dealers who had interesting Nineties for sale when I was coming.

When on British territory I soon realised that my map was far to large-scaled to be able to help me finding the suitable roads for me and my bike. But after a quick visit in a bookshop in Newcastle I started my trip down to my first visit, Jake Wright in Ilkley. Unfortunately the weight of the camping gear slowed me down more than I thought and riding the 150km took me all day and most of the evening too before me reaching the camping site. The next day I visited Jake Wright´s and took their C-reg. Ninety for a test-drive and a close examination and then continued to Huddersfield and The Land Rover Centre. By that time my left knee hurt due to the heavy gear on the bike, so I put myself and the bike on the metro train instead of cycling the 50km over the hills to Huddersfield.

The Land Rover Centre Huddersfield turned out to be a highly professional dealer with very welcoming staff. Their Ninety had a quite high price for a C-reg., but the condition was amazingly good. The vehicle was fully refurbished with new carpets, seven cloth seats and a resent respray and that in conjunction with that the vehicle only been rolling approx. 70000km gave the impression of a nearly new vehicle. After a test-drive there was no problem to decide to buy this one, because the was no chance to find any better, especially not then this one was originally sent overseas to Ghana, Africa and therefore had both speedometer for km/h and the steering wheel on the left side of the vehicle. The history of this vehicle is a bit extraordinary, first exported to Ghana, Africa and them popping up in Beijing, China as used by the British department of defence. Them bought by a British couple in China who used it in China before turning back home to Britain bringing the vehicle with them. As if it wasn´t enough travelling for a lifetime of a vehicle, I bought it and brought it to Linkoping in Sweden.

After buying the car and staying at Gail´s at the Bed & Breakfast across the road from the Land Rover centre, in order to wait for the money transfer to be carried out. Once the money was transferred, I loaded my bicycle into the Land Rover and went down to the outskirts of London and checked in to a camping site close to the end of the subway. The following days before I boarded the ferry in Harwich, I had a warm and sunny vacation in London.