The record
Herbert Lomas had been a wheelwright since 1901, and Herbert Lomas Ambulances Ltd was registered in Manchester in 1913; from its works at Handforth, near Wilmslow in Cheshire, the firm built ambulance bodies on Austin, Bedford, Morris and Land Rover chassis until 1981. Its Land Rover ambulances ran from the Series II — a 1958 Series II 109, SUN 281, is recorded — through the Series IIA years of 1961 to 1971, and Land Rover granted the conversion Approved status in 1965. The body is the point: a rounded, fully integrated coachbuilt cab and rear in place of the Land Rover's own panels, offered with a glass-reinforced plastic roof raised to take four stretchers, with full air conditioning for hot climates, and in completely-knocked-down form for assembly overseas. A 1968 Commercial Motor article had the firm exporting ambulances to eighty countries over the previous twenty years, and the Navy and the Royal Marines were among its British users.
The vehicle this record follows is a 1967 Series IIA Lomas ambulance in green, petrol-engined and four-wheel-drive, offered for sale with all of its original stretchers and equipment present, new tyres, an MOT to June 2019 and 46,467 miles on the odometer, at £25,000 or near offer. Its own service history — which unit, or whether it was a military vehicle at all rather than a green civilian one — is not given by the sale listing, so it stands here as a representative of the Lomas military ambulances rather than as a documented Army vehicle. The Navy and the Royal Marines are the British services recorded as Lomas users.
Research status: draft — identification, dates or figures could not all be pinned down; the summary says what is unresolved.
