Four university friends from New Zealand had listed their beaten and broken 1957 Series I Land Rover, christened ‘The Landy’, for sale on an auction site, following 15 years of ownership. The listing told the story of their many adventures and their sorrow at parting with their beloved Land Rover.

While Will Radford, Jeremy Wells, Anthony Dawson and James Shatwell thought they were closing a chapter with the sale, fate intervened when the team at Land Rover New Zealand read the ad and hatched a covert operation with Will’s wife, Claire, to give ‘The Landy’ a painstaking ground-up mechanical restoration.