Corgi Vanguards VA11101 Land Rover Series 1

Spencer Wilks and younger brother Maurice rescued the Coventry firm of Rover from near financial ruin in 1929 and spent the 1930s rebuilding the company, acquiring a reputation for making high quality saloons in the process. So successful were they, that Rover was asked to join the Air Ministry’s shadow factory scheme in 1936, meaning that as the war ended Rover were left in control of two extra plants in the Midlands. They were offered first refusal on both by the Ministry and chose to sell their old factory, Helen Street in Coventry, so they could relocate car production to the huge new Solihull plant. When Rover were eventually given the green light to start building civilian cars at the end of 1944, their steel allocation was sufficient for only 1100 vehicles; a fraction of what was needed to keep Solihull profitable. Development work on an aluminium-based small car was shelved because it lacked export potential and with the all new P4 still some years away (although its