The curious case of the Land Rover Breakdown truck jib

Just as I thought I was beginning to understand the progress from one variant to another for the Land Rover Breakdown Trucks, this one comes along!

With its suspension and interior it is clearly a 417S but on the back is a Type 1 jib. I had mistakenly thought that the jib had been replaced by the more solid affair on the 417 models so, when suspension came along, it would have been just the Type 2 jibs on the 417S models. 

So my earlier article needs some amendment, I'm afraid. I suppose it is feasible now to find a 417 with a Type 2 jib. I find that hard to believe but it did actually seem to me the more likely, as I had thought that the Type 2 jib came in before the 417S update. This model would imply that the 417S update came before the change to Type 2 jibs.

It's all very confusing, especially as all the 417S examples I have encountered so far have had the Type 2 jib! As many examples are from very reliable sources like QDT and come from recognised experts' collections too, you just have to believe that they are, indeed, 417S and not 477 with a tin roof. In fact, I sem to recall that all the illustrations of 417S on QDT's site had closed jibs. 

So the only conclusion I can come to is that 417S models exist with both types of jib and I guess that was because the dates of both changes must have been quite close.

So there would have been a pile of red models and a box of assorted jibs for a while and there still remained a sort of random selection when the production process brought in suspension and seats. By my reckoning, there really won't have been very many of either the 417 with the closed type 2 jib or the 417S with the open type 1 jib and I shall now set about trying to find some good examples of each.

Of course, someone out there may know different.

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Just to make you smile, or grimace, here is what you get for 417S from a Vectis archive! A plastic canopy? As I have said before, we all make mistakes. 

Or there is yet another variation of the 417S which would then make late versions totally indistinguishable from a 477?