My first encounter with Land Rovers was when I was about 10 years old. My dad was the manager of an Austin/Rover (or whatever they were calling themselves at the time) dealership. The company's recovery truck was a 109" series III pickup. One Saturday morning my dad was borrowing the company Land Rover to pick up a load of sand for some DIY construction at home. At the builders merchant the guy said "don’t worry I’ll use the dumper to load your sand", we thought great, no shoveling! The problem was he dumped the sand in the best way he could but once on the road we soon noticed that the steering was a bit on the vague side to say the least, Even as a ten year old in the passenger seat I could tell we weren’t going where the steering was pointing some of the time. The majority of sand was the wrong side of the rear axle leaving the front axle extremely light. On returning the Landy to work my dad let me have a go around the big car park at the side of the garage…it was a bit of a double act with my dad was doing the clutch work and me on steering, brake and throttle. This was a big hit with me and probably got me hooked on the driving thing….and may be it sowed the Land Rover seed.