The record
The expedition began in 1965 when the Bolivian traveller Tony Morrison showed Imperial College's Exploration Board his film of the deserted Spanish silver towns of Sud Lípez, and two students, Alan Cope and Tony Read, decided to investigate the collapse of the district's mining industry; Jeffrey O'Leary and Peter Francis completed the party in the summer of 1965. With Board approval and money from mining companies (Copper Pass & Son among them) the four sailed on 12 July 1966 by tanker to Peru, drove overland across the Andes, and spent three months at San Antonio de Lípez, 15,000 ft up, on mining geology, archaeology, botany and solar-radiation measurements before shipping the vehicle home from Lima in October.
Tony Read's vehicle report explains the choice. Motorcycles and a hired lorry were rejected, no vehicle could be hired in Peru or Bolivia, and so a petrol long-wheelbase Land Rover was bought in England to be shipped out and, if possible, sold at the end: a 1961 twelve-seater with 35,000 miles, purchased for £550 from Ickenham Motors of Ickenham, Middlesex, after an AA inspection (£5 10s) and checks by an instructor at the Rover Company's service school at Solihull and an inspector at the Rover repair depot in Fulham, which found only the steering wanting adjustment. Read took Rover's three-day owner-driver maintenance course in March 1966 and bought the recommended spares, Series I parts common to the IIA coming at half price from Autotools of Solihull.
The modifications were heavy-duty rear springs and dampers, Michelin XY tyres all round, an Exide heavy-duty 12-volt battery for cold starting, a home-made roof rack, water-can racks, and winch drums on the front wheels; on the road the timing and carburettor jets were changed for altitude and low-octane petrol, down to a 112.5 main jet and 45 pilot between 12,000 and 15,000 ft. Loaded with four men and their gear the car reached the mines at 15,200 ft and, ten miles on, had the road edge collapse under it — a few hours' work to recover. Its spare battery ran the party's only travelling light after their borrowed pressure lamp exploded.
The registry model follows photograph 23 in the report, the Land Rover in the field near San Antonio: the twelve-seater with its tall home-made rack of bare uprights, white door lettering IMPERIAL COLLEGE · MINAS DE LIPEZ · EXPEDITION, wing mirrors and the winch drums on the front hubs, with a bare front bumper as photographed. The photographs are monochrome, so the grey-green paint and the pale roof and wheels are approximations; the registration is not legible and is omitted. The vehicle's later fate is not recorded.
