70th Anniversary meet Methven New Zealand

Great day out today at the Land Rover 70th Anniversary meet in Methven organised by the Canterbury Rover Car and Land Rover Club. Although mainly South Island people went, it was a national event so quite a few people made the journey down from the North Island some having traveled well over 500 miles with a 3 hour ferry crossing in the middle. About 200 Land Rovers of all ages were there, including my solitary Freelander! Was a great day, meeting new people and sitting in the sun catching up with folk from previous events. Was an early start meeting up with a group in Christchurch organised by the NZ LR Forums and we made the 100km drive to Methven "in convoy".











There was also a Rover cars meet and this great exhibit which is one of Rover's gas turbine engines they developed in the mid 50's for testing in their cars.

Good to see Freelanders being represented as part of the Land Rover family.

The old rover cars, are they ex UK peeps who own them or is it the locals who own them? The gas turbine would probably have been designed by Maurice Wilks or he would at least been one of a team who worked on that project.

Hippo said:

Good to see Freelanders being represented as part of the Land Rover family.

The old rover cars, are they ex UK peeps who own them or is it the locals who own them? The gas turbine would probably have been designed by Maurice Wilks or he would at least been one of a team who worked on that project.

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Yeh, shame mine was the only one there though

The cars were lined up in the show area in rows sort of age order - so the 1st row was S1s - then S2, S3, Defender, Discovery, RR had a section over to 1 side. I was the last car outside and wondering where to go - so chatting to the "organiser" (the bloke who happened to be standing by the gate who was thrown a high-vis jacket) we decided I'd start a row all for myself

A lot of people over here are ex UK - so I'm sure some of them were, but most of the owners I chatted to were Kiwis. Funnily enough though, the first bloke I chatted to was a Pomm who came over specifically for the event. He borrowed a car from a Rover Car Club member for the show

Not sure if Maurice Wilks had anything to do with the gas turbine engine. This is the info sheet the bloke had...