The record
In 1975 a Joint Services expedition led by Squadron Leader Tom Sheppard set out to cross the Sahara from west to east for the first time — 7,500 miles from the Atlantic coast to the Red Sea, 81 days across country that no vehicle had crossed in that direction — in four of the very first production 101-inch 1-tonne Forward Controls, two of them towing Rubery Owen powered-axle trailers driven from the rear power take-off. Navigation combined astronomical fixes and sun-compass bearings worked through an HP-65 programmable calculator; along the way the team took gravity measurements and collected minerals, lizards and snails for the British Museum. It remains one of the defining Land Rover expeditions, and the 101 it proved went on to twenty years of Army service.
The queue's photograph shows one of the four as it survives today, 60 FL 38: the cargo 101 with its canvas gone and the cab cut open to the waist — no roof, screen or door tops — grey roll hoops over the cab and back to the bed, mirrors on long stays from the cab corners, a white silhouette of Africa on each door, a yellow disc on the cab front and its drop-side bed bare. Sheppard was reunited with an original expedition vehicle, still carrying its sun compass, at a Land Rover press event decades later. Which of the four this is, and its present owner, are not stated in the sources.
