OSK 866 was first registered on the 11th July 1962 to Durham County Fire Brigade. OSK, or Oskar, was sold on after 25 years’ service and went through a number of owners before being owned by us in September 1996. Thirty months later the father and son project finished spending nearly every weekend on her resulting in what you see today. Most of the work was undertaken by us including rebuilding a lot of the engine, all three gearboxes, overdrive and PTOs.  An awful lot of the vehicle is original, she’s not been ‘restored’ on a new chassis, a different engine and gearbox—otherwise known as a reproduction restoration; the chassis is original (new rear cross member, no surprise there!), original engine, gearbox, body, running gear, the ‘62 marked wheels and the Aeroparts winch! The winch was what Land Rover offered as an ‘optional equipment’. Oskar has a number of pieces of optional equipment. These include a heater, a passenger windscreen wiper and 5 PTOs including a bottom and rear PTO that are used to drive a saw bench, kindling machine and corn crushers.

Often seen behind Oskar is another restoration project, a May 1950 Brockhouse BT8 trailer. Made by J Brockhouse & Co and sold through Land Rover, the BT8 was sold (£177 in 1965) for those people who needed a bit more space than the back of a 80” Series 1 Landy could offer. Designed to use the same wheels and wheel track as a Land Rover it proved to be a very functional and versatile trailer. The Brockhouse trailer is a bit of a holy grail of trailers for Land Rover owners. Not many still exist, one of the reasons being is that they’re made of steel, steel with folded up edges that trap water—from day one! This has resulted in most trailers rotting away. What have survived are either restored or in a very rough condition. Our trailer was the latter, thankfully it was mostly complete but it was rough. Nine months later after a complete rebuild resulted in a factory finish trailer, ideal for transporting camping equipment and PTO driven equipment.