Meteor Works.

The Meteor Works is a classic Land Rover restoration and parts operation whose stated aim is 'reengineering classic parts with a modern flair'. Alongside restoration and sales it sources, imports and ships vehicles internationally, and it documents its own fleet in an online garage. The company's exact base is not stated on its website, and it was not established during this research.

Project One in that garage is a 1979 Series III ACR Marshall ambulance the firm calls 'Leyland' — the first vehicle it took in. Its recorded history is Royal Air Force service as an airfield crash rescue ambulance stationed at RAF Leeming in North Yorkshire, followed by a transfer to St John Ambulance of Lytham St Annes in Lancashire. The Meteor Works has photographed it back on an airfield, noting the occasion as the first time the truck had been on one in over thirty years.

The type behind it is well documented. Land Rover ambulances were built on the 109-inch chassis from the late 1950s to the early 1980s, with the bodies supplied chiefly by Marshall of Cambridge (and Mickleover). The RAF version of the standard military ambulance is recorded in reference sources as FV18068, intended for the rapid recovery of airfield incident casualties and distinguished by a large front crash bar and a 240-volt shoreline socket that kept the battery charged for constant readiness. The route this vehicle took out of service is a common one: another Marshall-bodied RAF ambulance is recorded as serving twenty years at RAF Catterick before likewise joining St John Ambulance.

The firm's name echoes the Rover Company's own Meteor Works — the Coventry factory whose name Rover carried over to the Solihull plant where the Land Rover was developed in 1947-48 — though the sources consulted do not state whether that is the intended reference.

No source consulted records this particular vehicle's paint scheme or registration, so no factory colours are recorded here.