The record
Fire fighting was among the first specialist roles Rover catalogued for the Land Rover. From the late 1940s the company fitted out Series I chassis in-house as complete fire appliances, buying in pumps and equipment from specialist suppliers to offer a standard fire tender - initially on the 80-inch wheelbase and later on the longer 86/88 and 107/109-inch chassis. Typical outfits paired a pump driven from the centre power take-off (with rear pump installations on many vehicles) with hose reels, ladders, extinguishers and, on some vehicles, a 40-gallon first-aid water tank; others were equipped more simply as hose carriers and towing vehicles for trailer pumps.
The customers were rarely city brigades, whose appliances were far larger; Series I fire engines instead went to factories, airfields, estates, and rural county brigades that needed a compact all-wheel-drive appliance able to reach a moorland or farm fire. Surviving examples include vehicles delivered new to works brigades - the printing firm Hazell, Watson & Viney among them - and machines like the 1958 Series I fire engine LCC23 and the 1949 tender JRT 797 now shown at museums and concours events, almost invariably in traditional fire-appliance red.
Rover soon found that fire authorities wanted more varied and professional specifications than the factory could economically provide, and in the mid-1950s Carmichael and Sons of Worcester - already an established fire engineering house - was appointed Land Rover's approved fire appliance converter. That relationship carried Land Rover fire engines through the Series II era's Redwing range and ultimately to the six-wheel Carmichael conversions of Range Rover and Defender, but it began with these first factory Series I tenders.
