Air-defence configuration of the Hotspur/SMC Sandringham 6 6×6 Stage One V8, carrying a twin 20 mm Rheinmetall Rh 202 anti-aircraft mount on the load bed; documented only from period Sandringham 6 promotional material and believed to have remained an exhibition demonstrator.
BASE VEHICLESeries III 109″CONVERTERSandringham Motor Company (SMC Engineering), Hotspur Armoured ProductsIN SERVICE1980sPRODUCTIONbelieved prototype/demonstrator onlyLAYOUT6 wheels
The record
Among the military bodies offered on the Sandringham 6 — the Land Rover-approved 6×6 conversion of the Series III Stage One V8 engineered by SMC Engineering (Bristol) and marketed with Hotspur — period brochure material shows an air-defence carrier mounting twin Rheinmetall Rh 202 20 mm autocannon, each fed from 270-round magazines, on the rear platform. The two-ton-payload 6×6 chassis, in 125-inch (S6) or 139-inch (S6E) wheelbase, gave the light AA system a mobile mount while retaining over 90 per cent standard Land Rover parts.
The Sandringham 6 was first shown at the 1980 British Army Equipment Exhibition at Aldershot and entered production in 1982, and the AA configuration is believed to have appeared as a demonstration of the chassis' versatility in that period. No customer for the anti-aircraft variant is documented, and with the entire Sandringham 6 run put at around a dozen vehicles it almost certainly remained a brochure offering and exhibition prototype. Documentation is thin — chiefly scanned promotional photographs — so details of this variant should be treated with caution.
Research status: draft — identification, dates or figures could not all be pinned down; the summary says what is unresolved.
Specification
MANUFACTURERLand Rover (donor Series III Stage One V8)
MANUFACTUREDoffered early 1980s; believed exhibition prototype only
ENGINE3.5 L Rover V8 petrol (Stage One)
PRODUCTION RUNbelieved prototype/demonstrator only
COUNTRY OF ORIGINUnited Kingdom
STATUSunknown
RECORD KINDNamed model
MODEL LINESeries III
WHEELS6
CATEGORYMilitary · Other
Catalogue fields describe the vehicle's structure and body as this registry records it. They are not certified factory measurements, and no performance figures are published here.
Renders & references
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