The expedition
The 1948 80-inch had been in the Avery family since new. In the early 1990s Philip Avery declared he would restore it and take it to the 50th-anniversary commemorations in England in 1998; since he was saying this in New Zealand, the plan to ship it there grew into driving it there, and then into a loop of the world with the anniversary events as a stopover. The car was kept as standard as possible — canvas tilt, original seating, even the original-type T28 tyres; the only changes were seat belts, indicators, a temperature gauge, a bonnet lock and a troublesome 60-litre auxiliary tank in the spare-wheel well. Sponsors Repco (Lucas) NZ, Kuehne & Nagel, CRC, BP and Rover NZ paid the shipping and more. The Averys travelled in company with the Watkins family in a Series IIA short-wheelbase, the two cars keeping together only through 'the wild bits' from eastern Europe to India and otherwise going at their own pace, the 80-inch being the slower.
With 1,500 miles on the clock the car left Auckland and was shipped to the United States. Crossing the continent at 4,000 feet into headwinds the 1,595 cc engine worked hard; the rebuilt SU fuel pump began to sulk at 3,000 miles, a broken exhaust-valve spring was found at Oklahoma City after 4,400 miles, just off the remains of Route 66, and in the Smoky Mountains the engine lost power with the chuff of a burnt valve, so they retreated to a campground at Pigeon Forge, drained the coolant into a rubbish sack hung from a tree, took the head off, and fitted a used spring from a local engine man's scrap pile — an old Nissan's, he thought. One day lost, and LAND48 rolled into New York on schedule for the 4 May deadline with 7,468 miles up. From Liverpool they reached the Eastnor Castle anniversary event on time, toured Ireland — another burnt valve found by compression test at Ballykeeran, all valves replaced with the latest stainless type — and the Shugborough event, sat out the wettest summer in memory at Chipping Norton while the Lucas wipers expired, and joined the 50th Tour to Switzerland, where the auxiliary tank split a weld while filling with cheap Italian petrol and Barbara Toy's Pollyanna lent a jerry can.
When the Swiss convoy turned for home the Averys kept heading east, the direction they followed all year. The worn T28s were replaced with Goodyear radials in Turkey after a slithering passage over Sofia's wet cobbles at 18,500 miles; in Iran petrol stations were unsigned state outlets, and across the border into Pakistan fuel came from desert bootleggers while American bombing went on thirty miles away near the Afghan frontier, where the SU pump finally failed in the middle of overtaking a truck and gave way to a Facet electronic pump. Nepal and India followed, with a brake pipe brazed by a street workshop in a busy Indian town after the pedal went to the floor in traffic. The car was shipped from India to Perth, Australia, at about 27,000 miles; another exhaust valve went in Perth traffic and one more after Melbourne, but they took the coast road to Sydney anyway and met the Watkins' Series IIA for a photograph under the Harbour Bridge, then shipped home to Auckland, arriving almost exactly a year after leaving with 32,311 miles on the speedometer: no broken differentials, axles or springs, engine and gearbox never out, and not a single puncture. The trip was covered by Land Rover magazines at the time; Avery's four-part mechanical review, written for the Land Rover Register 1948–1953, is the account that survives online, and the fuel bill alone came to about £3,500.
