Unlike the Porsche Cayenne S Transsyberia we featured recently, the Land Rover Series III was actually a fairly widely produced rig, with 440,000 built from 1971 to 1985. The thing is, here in the United States, you just don’t see many of them, because the Series III wasn’t sold in North America after 1974, largely the result of stringent U.S. regulations and the first OPEC fuel crisis. 

The Series III was, as the roman numerals suggest, the 3rd generation of the first mass-produced civilian four wheel drive car with doors and an available hard roof. Conceived in the aftermath of World War II, the series Land Rovers represented a shift from the luxury vehicles Rover Company was producing pre-war to the utilitarian workhorses dictated by post-war life. 

And the changes between the various generations were as utilitarian as the vehicle itself. For example, the headlights were moved to the wings on late Series II models to comply with Australian, American and Dutch lighting regulations and remained in this position for the Series III. In keeping with early 1970s trends in automotive interior design, the simple metal dashboard of earlier models was redesigned to be moulded plastic, which as you can imagine, is a much safer option. The instrument cluster, which was previously centrally located, was also moved to the driver's side and the 2.25-litre engine had its compression raised from 7:1 to 8:1, increasing the power slightly to bring the vehicle current with its competition.

The Series III is really a dazzlingly simplistic piece of art. Spend the next 6 minutes with our friends at Petrolicious to learn more about the experience of wheeling a Series III.