Defender 90 106 mm Recoilless Rifle Gunship.

The 106 mm recoilless rifle is an American design of the 1960s still in service around the world, and a light 4×4 that can carry one is a cheap anti-tank asset for a small army. Land Rover built this Defender 90 at Solihull in 1990 and sent it to Marshalls of Cambridge to be converted into a gunship demonstrator: the body opened up — roof and door tops removed — with two separate raked flat screens, the rifle — a tube nearly as long as the vehicle — on a pedestal behind the seats and firing over the bonnet, a spare wheel on the body side, with the 2.5-litre 200 Tdi and five-speed gearbox underneath. It toured the world as a sales demonstrator and was damaged in an accident in Peru.

Back in Britain it was sold in 1998 to an owner in South Wales who removed the weapon system, keeping the original parts, and fitted a truck cab and a full right-hand door. The Dunsfold Collection bought it at online auction in 2013, spent years finding a deactivated 106 mm rifle — sourced early in 2020 — and made new mounting brackets to return it to the configuration in the photograph, which this model follows. In the game the rifle fires the single-shell weapon the Australian gun buggy uses.