Motor Sport with John Wright

Here are a selection of images from our days of involvement with rallying and off road motor sport.

I am John Wright and I started Land Rover trialling with Pennine Land rover club in my first 86" land rover and then in a lightweight land rover (rare at the time) into which I fitted a Rover V8 engine in 1975 using an adaptor that I had made, this being one of the first V8 Land Rovers in the country. .

The V8 lightweight was used on competitive safaris (speed events) and hillrally,s as well as competing in some french off road rallies

.Around that time I also built an 80" land rover for trialling.

I had a lot of success with the lightweight and the 80" including winning 7 trophies at the national rally at Eastnor Castle and then when Range Rovers came along I decided that those were the way to go and I found a burned out vehicle in 1977 which I rebuilt and converted into a pickup.

This was used on competetitive safaris and also on some stage rallies around Yorkshire again with a lot of success.

As this Range Rover gradually got bumped and bashed around I decided to remove the body and build a type of buggy body onto it which would withstand more punishment.

This proved to be a great success winning events such as the Bovington 150 and the AWDC national championships in 1985 and 1986.

All of this rally preperation with the empasis on reliability helps us whilst carrying out everyday tasks in our Landrover workshop on our customers vehicles.