The Winter Wagons display might be a celebration of the estate, station wagon and woodie. But the Station Wagon has been connected to the 4x4, the very type of vehicle that has destined the estate to history, since the 1940s.
In partnership with Tickford, coachbuilder to all sorts of manufacturers including the most luxurious to the most everyday, Land Rover released the Station Wagon and it’s been a staple of the range ever since. Generally it’s a long-wheelbase model with additional seats, but the recipe has been tested and refined in various ways since that Series I of 1949,
It’s impossible to spend a day at Bicester Heritage without clocking at least one Land Rover, so we couldn’t ignore it. And REVS has exactly what we needed locked away in a Tanker Shed as part of its REVS Restore project.
It is a Series 3 ripe for renovation, and members of the 8000-strong REVS-Limiter community will spend weekends here and there doing exactly that over the course of 2023 and beyond. The aim is to restore the Land Rover, and hopefully the mental health of those who might need a helping hand in the REVS-Limiter group.
“We are not therapists,” Reverend Adam Gompertz says of REVS Restore. “We are not providing the structured support that some people with more acute and complex mental health needs might require. But we hope that for people encountering the stressful times we can all experience, we can provide some space, a 7/16 spanner, some engine oil and some supportive friendships.”
You might have seen the Station Wagon on the REVS stand at the June Scramble, and on a ramp by Hangar 136 in October. You’ll not miss it in Winter Wagons, pick up the last of the tickets for Sunday 8 January while you still can.
