Bender City Abschlepp- und Bergungsdienst of Düsseldorf's Land Rover Defender 90 converted into a compact tow truck with a rear underlift — fleet number 12, white with 'downtown' script, chequer-plate body and amber beacons — photographed in service in April 2006, used for recovering cars from the city's narrow streets and car parks.
Bender City is a Düsseldorf towing and recovery firm (its web address, bergemeister.de, is painted on the roof line) that runs a fleet of small wreckers for the inner city, where a full-size recovery truck cannot get into the multi-storey car parks and alleys. Around 2000 it had a Defender 90 truck cab converted into a lightweight tow truck: the pickup bed was replaced by a low deck with tool boxes and a hydraulic underlift boom that slides under a car's wheels and lifts it for towing, with chequer-plate sills and body sides to stand the wear. Numbered 12 in the fleet, it was photographed at work in April 2006.
The two Wikimedia Commons photographs are the references: white Defender 90 with black wheel arches, 'downtown' in red script on the doors and bonnet, Bender City Abschleppdienst in green on the doors with trade-association badges, the firm's address on the rear body, two amber beacons on the cab roof, chequer-plate sills and rear body, red and white chevrons on the bumper ends, white steel wheels and the underlift at the rear. The plate is obscured in the photographs and left blank. The registry model reproduces that vehicle in the Breakdown group. The conversion firm is not identified; the queue row's country of origin records the conversion as German work on a British chassis.
Specification
MANUFACTURERLand Rover (Defender 90 truck cab)
MODIFIER / COACHBUILDERUnidentified German converter for Bender City (underlift tow-truck body)
MANUFACTUREDTd5-era Defender 90 (inferred); photographed April 2006
ENGINELand Rover Td5 2.5 L turbo-diesel (inferred)
OPERATORBender City Abschlepp- und Bergungsdienst, Königsberger Str. 234a, Düsseldorf
RECORD KINDNamed model
MODEL LINEDefender
WHEELS4
NOMINAL WHEELBASE90″
CATEGORYSpecial · Breakdown
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
Front three-quarterRegistry renderThree-quarterRegistry renderSideRegistry renderRearRegistry renderFrontRegistry renderFleet 12 from the front left, April 2006 — a reference for this model; linked only.Detectandpreserve · CC BY 3.0 ↗Left side, showing the underlift and deck; linked only.Detectandpreserve · CC BY 3.0 ↗
Where it was
DE Germany2000–2015 · Bender City Abschleppdienst, Düsseldorf