Land Rover Defender 2,000,000 sells for $888,000

Tim Beissmann, CARADVICE.COM.AU
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The one-of-a-kind, instant classic Land Rover Defender 2,000,000 has sold for an astonishing £400,000 ($888,184) at an exclusive charity auction in London.

The unique vehicle, as the name suggests, is the two-millionth of the iconic Series Land Rover and Defender models manufactured at Land Rover’s Solihull plant since 1948.

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The winning bid – almost 20 times the price of a regular Defender 90 – came from a collector from Qatar. All proceeds from the sale will be donated to Land Rover’s humanitarian and conservation partners: the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, which will use the donation to help communities in Southeast Nepal to improve how they tackle natural disaster relief, and the Born Free Foundation, which will use the funds to support the Project Lion Rover wildlife conservation initiative in Meru National Park in Kenya.

Defender 2,000,000 was built in May by a host of Land Rover brand ambassadors and people from the company’s history, including the sons of the founders of Land Rover Stephen and Nick Wilks, actress and conservationist Virginia McKenna, and adventurer Bear Grylls.

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The car was also given the tick of approval by the original project engineer for Land Rover, Arthur Goddard, now aged 94 and living in Australia (pictured in the passenger seat above, and below).

Defender 2,000,000 boasts a number of distinctive and bespoke features including unique no. 2,000,000 logos and badging, an aluminium plaque signed by everyone who helped assemble it, special ‘S90 HUE’ registration plates paying tribute to the original ‘HUE 166’ registration of the first pre-production Land Rover, and an engraved map of Red Wharf Bay, where the design of the original Land Rover was first drawn in the sand.

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Land Rover production in the Solihull plant will end in January after almost seven decades.

Production of the first all-new Defender since 1948 is expected to commence in 2018, with a concept tipped to be revealed next year.

Robert Brooks and Theo Pathitis