Auto Club Highland Patrol Gen 1

History

4×4s were the obvious choice — they could tow a car off a single-track road, carry fuel and spares, and keep going through Highland winters — and by 1958 the Auto Club reckoned the patrols had helped more than 160,000 members in five years. TLE 883 is a Gen 1 Shorty in the Auto Club's golden yellow with the black-painted front wing sides that kept the mud from showing, a truck cab with a canvas tilt over the rear body, the spare on the bonnet and a HIGHLAND PATROL board topped by the Auto Club badge on the cab roof. The Oxford Diecast 1:43 model 43LAN188025 and its product photographs, together with the Auto Club's own history of its first ten years of 4×4s, are the references: yellow body with black wing sides, khaki tilt, Auto Club badges on both doors and the left wing front, the TLE 883 plate on the right wing front, a yellow whip aerial behind the cab and black steel wheels. The registry model reproduces that vehicle in the Breakdown group; the exact number of Highland Patrol 4×4s is not recorded in the sources.