It was on this day in 1948 that the Land Rover was officially launched at the Amsterdam Motor Show.

The brainchild of Rover’s acclaimed chief engineer Maurice Wilks, the Land Rover was originally created as a utility, four-wheel drive vehicle for farmers using a Jeep chassis and components. It quickly became a product line of the Rover Company.

Land Rover was later absorbed into the Rover-Triumph division of the newly-created British Leyland Motor Corporation in 1968 but the ongoing commercial success of its offerings, particularly the fledgling Range Rover, prompted Land Rover to splinter into a separate company under the BL umbrella.

Land Rover remained part of the subsequent Rover Group until it was acquired by BMW in 1994 before it was sold on to Ford where it became part of its Premier Automotive Group along with the Aston Martin, Jaguar and Volvo brands.

In 2008 Ford decided to sell the Land Rover and Jaguar operations to Tata Motors of India for a reported £1.7 billion who promptly integrated the two brands into one company - Jaguar Land Rover with production facilities in England (Coventry), India and China.

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