Monday, January 20, 2020

The Defender is back home



Finally, after two months in the garage, the Defender ("Grane") is back home.  With its new transmission and transfer case, not to forget its new engine and just about everything else, it is running better than it was on that cold, snowy December 31, 1993, day when I drove if off the lot of Midlothian Motors in Virginia.  Interestingly enough, it arrived home just two weeks before Land Rover’s alleged successor to the Defender shows up the annual car show in DC.  Sure, I will drop in on the show to take a look at the new Defender, although it really is not a successor to the iconic Defender.  To say it is would be equivalent to saying that the Boeing 737, or whatever,  is the successor to Wright Flyer. When people ask me if I would buy one, I ask them, "Why would I buy one if I have one of the originals?"  Even if I didn't have Grane now, while I would certainly consider one - it is supposed to be the best equipped off-the-shelf 4X vehicle money can buy - I would probably end up with one from one of those outfits that builds the original Defender from kits.



Now that Grane is back home, my focus will now be on OTR-11.  Where to?  When?  I am I just starting to mull over the options.  The two trips I would really like to undertake would be: first,  circumnavigation of North American (ex Mexico, of course), i.e., northeast from DC to ST Johns and the Northwest River in Newfoundland-Labrador, then northwest to both Inuvik (Northwest Territories) and Prudhoe Bay (Alaska), then down to San Diego, then east to Key West (Florida), and then back to DC, a distance of at least 16,830 miles; and second, a trip across Russia from Vladivostok to Saint Petersburg, 5934 miles. Interestingly enough, the latter is only 54 miles more than the outward bound portion of OTR-1, from DC to Prudhoe Bay with Sonntag knack in 2000, but I would have to brush up on my Russian and figure out how to get the Defender there and back first. My guess is that I will settle for something a little but less ambitious (the Yukon?) in deference to Donner’s  preferences, not to mention other factors involving myself. 



ED and Donner, from off the road.



OTR-11?

.