Perhaps its time for a little about me,
Well the family is from the North West of the UK Barrow in Furness and Liverpool/St Helens, we moved to South Wales when I was a child in the very early 80’s and I grew up there in a small market town in the Wye valley surrounded by farms and woodland. Most of my friends families had 'working' Land Rovers and in the classic farmer style, when they eventually gave up the ghost they then became part of the local topography. I must be one of the rare people that have never driven a Land Rover (series or defender) on a real road. Its all be off-road and farm tracks.
When I finished school I won a scholarship with the merchant navy and spent the next 20 years crossing the globe, living in OZ, Germany, France, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden & Italy between and during projects as well as a few other places that I spent time in for extended periods.
Finishing up with the Merchant navy after working with Cruise lines, Gas carriers, Ferries, Rig supply boats, Bulk carriers and ROV vessels amongst many others I side stepped into the luxury yacht industry. There I operated, managed and represented the build of various large yachts (up to about 300ft LOA, that one is for you
@Jean Mercier ) This was the first time my path crossed with the Grenadiers Designer, Toby Ecuyer and ironically would not be the last. Before anyone asks, no I haven't worked for Sir Jim, but I have worked of some pretty well known individuals that I'll not get into here for obvious reasons. Monaco GP, Cannes Film festival and various regattas were the order of the day.
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(yes a Unimog can tow this)
I always had an affinity for machines and cars in particular and became pretty active in the Lotus owners club and forum
https://www.thelotusforums.com/ this is where the template became apparent for me that a small volume manufacturer can have a direct and purposeful link to the enthusiast base.
Flashing forward a little I met my now wife in Peru during a charity fund raising trip with the adventurists and after crossing the Andes twice in a mercilessly unreliable Chinese rip off of a Honda (google Lifan) and a lot of flights back and forth to the States (Bremen to LA is not a fun commute 3-4 times a month) immigrated officially and gave up the marine engineer mantle for husband, dad, office manager and latterly forum dogs body.
I got bak into Land Rovers in California as part nostalgia (wasn't going to be racing in track days any more, nor could afford to financially support that rabbit hole) and part necessity as my eldest wanted to go off-roading and unbeknown to me COVID was just around the corner, this turned out to be a fantastic idea. and instrumental in keeping us sane and cohesive as a family.
There are few vehicles capable of doing everything I needed and within my budget with competence here so the Discovery 4 / LR4 in the states was bought, classic Defenders and Series vehicles are obscenely expensive over here and importing is pretty difficult to California. After a while I started to put together videos for people, helping them with their LR4 maintenance and fielded a lot of questions from members of the SOCAL Land Rovers Owners Club and trouble shooting rather more than I expected.
That brings me to the Grenadier. Several years ago when I first heard about the project and then with the impetus that followed I was searching for a Grenadier community that wasn’t reddit or Facebook. As we know this didn't really exist, so after picking the brains of some tech savvy friends this pulls us right to present day. Here we are with a vibrant community of likeminded souls as well as global car club put together from the ground up for a vehicle that didn't even exist in real terms yet…..
I still can’t believe that a forum wasn’t created for the Grenadier before this one, its baffling, but I do know that its communities like this one which keep a vehicle platform alive and 3rd party manufacturers interested, encouraging them to develop products for this emotionally important (at least to me) vehicle.
Ok, time for a cup of tea. I've a video to edit with us, Greg and a few new friends.......
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@Jean Mercier LOA Length overall)
