Varieties of the Series I Land Rover 109" WB

It's all about the handles. The handles at the back of the Land Rover which appear on early models but disappear at some point. Initially I thought that they went when the shaped wheels started to be fitted but now that I have found smooth wheel editions without handles, it must have been afterwards.

Here I can show you examples of each type: smooth wheels with handles, smooth wheels without handles and shaped wheels without handles. So far I have not found any shaped wheels with handles but you never can be sure about these things. (All I need say is look at some much earlier articles on the RAC 416 model when one attempts to use logic to figure out when something might have changed!)

Those are the varieties for the yellow / black and blue / cream editions. Technically, there was never a green '406' as it was only issued in Gift Set 2 with a canopy and a pony trailer but I thought I should include it and this follows the same theme of three types.

I had to steal and image from QDT for the smooth wheels without handles edition. I need to find one of these for my own collection. Clearly it is something that I have missed and I may well have sold several without appreciating that I needed one for myself!

The same three varieties can be found for the RAF 351 edition too.

For the RAC416 model I have found five varieties:

smooth wheels, headboard, handles

smooth wheels, headboard no handles

smooth wheels, no headboard, no handles

shaped wheels, headboard, no handles

shaped wheels, no headboard, no handles

The mystery is, of course, whether there are any shaped wheel Series I Land Rovers with handles. So far, none have appeared across the range so it does look as though there aren't going to be any but, as I said before, you never know . . . unless, that is, someone out there can identify the introduction of shaped wheels as being significantly later than the change of casting to delete the handles. My guess is that will have been the case so I shall not spend hours searching for what may never be found but I shall still take a second look at these models as and when they appear!

Here is the 416 Tours Secours model. Both my example and my friend Andi's have handles but the one illustrated by QDT doesn't so even this scarce item has at least two varieties.. It is so scarce, though, that finding out whether there are more varieties is going to be difficult! (I had earlier thought find one with handles would be difficult but first Andi wrote to me to remind me about the one he has in Eilum, Germany, and when I checked my own records I see that mine also had them!!)

And here is a real Land Rover (albeit a slightly shorter wheelbase) and you can see what I call handles. Now I think about it, maybe they're better described as 'steps' but I will go back and change everything later! Hope you will bear with me on that.