What is Difflocked?
An independent enthusiast registry of the Land Rover and its relatives: 469 named vehicles and 25 base models, each with a researched record, a 3D render and its sources. Around the registry sit 6 themed histories that read across the collection, an index of the 139 manufacturers, coachbuilders and workshops that built the vehicles, an atlas of where they were built and served, the expeditions they were driven on, a Creator for specifying your own Land Rover, the builds people have saved with it, and a browser racing game in which every vehicle here can be driven.
The purpose is simple: the working Land Rovers — fire tenders, ambulances, armoured cars, expedition wagons, licence-built oddities from Spain, Australia and Turkey — are scattered across museums, forums, brochures and photograph captions, and nobody had put them in one place with the evidence attached. Difflocked tries to. Start with the collection.
Where does the data come from?
Every record is researched individually and cites what it relies on: museum collections (the Dunsfold Collection, the Australian War Memorial, the REME Museum, the Army Museum Bandiana), manufacturer and operator archives, period sales brochures and workshop manuals, Grace's Guide and Companies House for the firms, marque references and club registers, and the photographs and captions of owners and enthusiasts. Each vehicle page ends with a Sources & evidence section listing them with the date they were consulted — 2,033 citations across the registry at the moment, plus 802 photographs rehosted under licences that allow it.
The research is a mix of manual work and AI-assisted searching, reviewed by hand and revised as people write in. The same goes for the makers: each firm's page carries its own history and sources, and a vehicle links to its builder only when the record's research names one.
How accurate is it?
Honestly: good, not perfect. 563 of the 597 records are marked researched, meaning their facts carry citations; the rest are draft — a summary and some sources, but with dates, engines or builders still to be confirmed. Every page shows its review status and the date the record last changed at the bottom, and estimates are written as estimates (a production figure with a ~ in front of it is one).
There will be mistakes: a wrong year, a builder credited with a sister vehicle's body, a livery that belonged to a different fleet. The registry improves as people point these out, so if you know better, use Submit a correction on the vehicle's page — it is checked against the sources and the record is updated. The one thing the site never presents as history is the game: its handling numbers are arcade tuning, kept entirely separate from the researched specifications.
Why are the pictures renders rather than photographs?
The vehicles are original 3D models — every one built from photographs and drawings for the game — and the pictures on the registry are those models rendered from five angles. That is why a 1950s ambulance and a 2016 Defender look like they belong to the same set: they do. Where a photograph's licence allows it (public domain, Creative Commons, Crown copyright expired, or the project's own pictures), the page shows it too, with its credit and licence in the caption; photographs that can only be linked are linked.
Some pages also carry an AI rendering impression: the registry's own render painted into a scene by an image model. These are always labelled as such, never used as evidence, and are there to give a sense of the vehicle in its working setting.
What is the difference between a named vehicle and a base model?
A named vehicle is a specific type or a specific example with its own story — the RUC's Tangi, the Carmichael Commando, a particular Series I that served with the AA. A base model is the underlying production Land Rover — Series II 109, Defender 110, Santana 1300 — with its body styles and factory colours, from which the named vehicles were built. Base-model pages list the named vehicles derived from them, and named vehicles link back to their base. The collection can be filtered to either kind.
What are the histories?
The registry catalogues one vehicle at a time; the histories read across it. Each takes a working role — policing, fire, rescue, casualty evacuation, soldiering — and follows the Land Rover through it from the first Series I conversions to the last Defenders, told through the vehicles in the collection and the workshops that built them. Every vehicle mentioned links to its record.
Who are the makers, and why is Land Rover not one of them?
The makers are the firms that decided what a Land Rover was for: licence manufacturers such as Santana and JRA, coachbuilders such as Marshall of Cambridge and Carmichael, armourers, engineering consultancies, and the police and army workshops that built vehicles in-house. Land Rover itself — Rover, British Leyland, Land Rover Ltd, JLR — is the base manufacturer behind nearly every record, so it is left out of the index rather than listed against everything. Each maker's page carries its history, sources and the registry vehicles it built or converted; the browse page filters them by trade, country, size and founding date.
What are the Creator and the builds?
The Creator lets you specify a Land Rover of your own: lineage, model, wheelbase and body, then paint, bumpers, lamps, racks, beacons and the rest, with a live 3D preview. Saving needs a free account. Saved builds appear under Builds — the vehicles people own, remember or are restoring — and each can be opened in the game with Play this build, copied into your own Creator, or kept private.
Can I play it?
Yes — the game runs in the browser, needs nothing installed and costs nothing. Pick a vehicle from the registry or a build of your own, choose a course and race a pack of AI drivers, or a friend. Keyboard on desktop, touch controls on phones.
I have found a mistake, or a vehicle you have missed. What do I do?
For a mistake, use Submit a correction on the vehicle's page: it opens a short form already filled in with the record's name, and what you send is checked against the sources. For a vehicle that is not here, use Suggest a vehicle. A photograph, a registration, a source or a memory of where it served all help; the best submissions say where the information comes from.
Can I use the text and pictures?
The research text and the 3D renders are the project's own work: quote or reuse them with a link back to the page. The photographs are not — each one is shown under its own licence, named in its caption with the photographer or archive credited, and those terms are the ones that apply. If you want to use something and are not sure, ask via the correction form on the page.
Is Difflocked connected to Land Rover?
No. Difflocked is an independent enthusiast project with no affiliation to Jaguar Land Rover, Santana, Otokar or any other manufacturer, operator or museum named on the site. Vehicle and company names are used to identify the vehicles they refer to, and their trademarks belong to their owners.
What does an account store?
An account needs only a username and a password; an email address is optional and used solely to reset the password. The account holds the builds you save in the Creator (public or private, your choice) and the registry vehicles you star as favourites. The site uses Google Analytics to see which pages are read; nothing about an account is shared with anyone.