The record
Small garages across Britain ran Land Rovers as light recovery trucks through the 1970s and 80s: a Series III pickup with a hand-winched crane on the bed could lift the front of a car and tow it back to the workshop, and with four-wheel drive it could reach a car in a field or a ditch that a conventional breakdown truck could not. THM 834S, an S-registration of 1977–78, is one such truck, preserved in the livery of ST Engineering of West Sussex, an off-road recovery and salvage operator, and taken on the Historic Commercial Vehicle Society's London to Brighton Run in 2026.
The Flickr photograph on Madeira Drive shows it: white Series III with the short 88-inch body and an open cab, a blue roll hoop over the cab carrying a TOWING board and two lamps, blue grille, blue sills and door frames, a white front bumper with blue chevrons and a Superwinch, a blue recovery crane on the bed, ST Engineering script with OFF ROAD RECOVERY & SALVAGE on the doors and white steel wheels. The queue row describes a 109-inch chassis, but the photograph shows the 88 and the model follows it. The registry model reproduces that vehicle in the Breakdown group; its front plate is not visible in the photograph.
