The record
In 1973 the AA launched Relay, the service that carried a broken-down car and its passengers home or to a garage anywhere in the country, and from 1976 it added Series III 109-inch Land Rovers to its depot fleets to feed it. Fitted with tow poles or working with trailers, the Land Rovers moved cars from awkward spots — soft verges, narrow lanes, ditches — to a safe point where a Relay truck could take over. They served until 1982, when heavier recovery trucks replaced them.
The Flickr photograph shows the AA's preserved 1976 example at the Goodwood Festival of Speed, parked beside an AA sentry box: a 109 station wagon in all-over AA yellow with yellow steel wheels, a short roof rack over the cab, an AA Service board with an amber beacon at the rear of the roof, the AA Relay arrows-and-badge logo on the front doors, a galvanised bumper and a plate that is not legible in the image. The registry model reproduces that vehicle in the Breakdown group; the plate is left blank and the number of Land Rovers in the tow-pole fleet is not given in the source.
