In an earlier post I wrote about the glassfibre Land-Rover mini-bus by Mulliners that never reached serial production. Not long after Mulliners presented its people carrier, another study for a forward control fibreglass Land-Rover emerged, this time for the army.
It was named ‘Truck No. 10’ and is mentioned in the 1983 (revised in 1990) book The Fighting Rovers by Leslie Geary, which you can still find on websites specialised in secondhand books. No. 10 was ‘introduced for consideration’ in 1961 and was designed to accommodate a 1 ton payload, or a driver and 8 fully equiped troops. It was to be based on an altered Land-Rover 109 chassis, fitted with a 2.25 litre petrol engine.
According to author Geary ‘the body structure was to be of exoskeletal form to provide inherent flotation and made of fibre glass formed plastic reinforced construction’. Besides being able to float, it also had to be airportable, meaning disassembly had to be easy in order to stack three of these fighting vehicles in an aeroplane.
Unlike the Land-Rover mini-bus by Mulliner’s, Rover Truck No. 10 never reached the prototype stage and all that is left of its history is this rare black and white photo of the original design study.
Ronald Janus
De Autoboerderij
