Made in Brooklyn

An Instagram post of a restored Land Rover Defender in Eastnor Green livery led to a fascinating meeting for Eastnor’s owner

There is a picture in the Eastnor archives of a Range Rover parked at the castle. But what makes this photo, blurry and faded, probably from the 1970s, so different is that the car is perched on the stairs inside the castle leading up from the front door to the Great Hall.  

Eastnor’s Imogen Hervey-Bathurst was too young to remember the day the picture was taken, but she knows the image well. ‘My father always told me about how a Range Rover was reversed up the stairs for the shot – it was because Range Rover was developed at the castle,’ says today’s owner-resident. ‘We have lots of pictures of the cars being tested here, but this is my favourite. It looks like it has just driven straight out of the Hall.’

The Range Rover was launched in 1970, and was test driven on the roads and tracks on the castle estate. The legacy of that work lives on at Eastnor today, where there are 66 miles of carefully maintained and managed trails in the grounds, a designated National Landscape, that have been used for decades as a secret test facility by Land Rover to develop the off-road capabilities of its cars. But these routes are also now open to the public, as Eastnor has pioneered a Land Rover/Range Rover facility on site where people can come to try the modern-day vehicles and learn how to put them through their paces.

These driving experiences make use of the varied terrain on the Eastnor estate, the steep slopes, wide ruts, muddy tracks, the ravines, deep running water, rocky areas and challenging descents, to give drivers a taste of off-road adventure. Significantly, visitors can drive with qualified Land Rover instructors to learn how to get the most out of these machines.

Imogen has grown up with Land Rovers and Range Rovers as an almost daily sight as the vehicles barrel around the roads surrounding the castle. She’s even tried the driving experience as a passenger and says that the “rock crawl” was the part she most enjoyed. ‘It’s incredible what these cars can do,’ she says. ‘I never thought you could drive over large boulders.’

Little wonder, then, that her attention was grabbed by a social media post she saw of a vintage Land Rover parked on the streets of New York. The picture was intriguing, but more so was the caption, which said that the car was in the colour Eastnor Green. ‘The old Defender on Instagram must have been decades old,’ she says, ‘but it looked in mint condition.’

Land Rover and Range Rover have long liked to name their vehicle colours after places, and Eastnor Green is indeed one of the classic shades, referencing the spiritual birthplace of the Range Rover. Intrigued, Imogen decide to contact the Brooklyn Coachworks, which was the firm that had put the image up. A couple of months later, she met Daniel Marcello, the founder of this outfit, for breakfast in Manhattan, where over eggs she learned all about his extraordinary passion and business.

For Daniel, the Land Rover Defender was his childhood dream car. When as an adult he finally bought a Defender, he says he simply fell in love. He started Brooklyn Coachworks in 2018, and now has three workshops – one in a warehouse in Williamsburg, another in Virginia and the third in Italy. Brooklyn Coachworks also recently opened a new showroom in West Palm Beach, Florida. He says that his mission is to restore Land Rover Defenders in a way that sees them “Purpose Built”.

‘“Purpose Built” is the philosophy we follow when building our Defenders,’ he explains. ‘Our Defender restorations use genuine Land Rover parts and accessories. Along with looking incredible, we engineered the perfect Defender with the right modifications for everyday off-road and on-road use.’ Daniel says he has been involved with the Land Rover community for 20 years now and he has nothing but respect for the British firm and its product.

‘My North American Spec Defender 90 has been the mule for all our builds,’ he continues. ‘During the past 20 years, I have rigorously tested it in every condition.’ It’s true that it has seen its fair share of city use (‘My Defender spent a lot of time driving around New York City in the sweltering summer heat in stop-and-go traffic’), but he’s taken it to places where the conditions are extreme – to both Iceland and the Sahara. ‘It has been off-roaded in every condition you can imagine. Through the deserts of Moab, Colorado's high altitudes, Canada's arctic conditions and rivers deeper than I would consider safe.’

It’s this type of driving – the type that the cars are prepared for at Eastnor during research and development – that has taught him how to expertly restore these beautiful motors. ‘Field testing Defenders around the world has given me the insight and knowledge to build the most capable and reliable Defender on the market.’

Daniel notes that his customers are those who love the design of this iconic vehicle and want to own one today that has been brought back to its best possible condition. His motivation is to keep this incredible piece of British automotive history alive and firing on all cylinders.

‘It takes between four and six months to build a custom TD5 Defender,’ he says. ‘A custom-built Defender powered by Rover V8s, Ford 2.3l EcoBoost, Cummins R2.8, GM 6.2l LS3/LT1 V8, or fully electric Defender can take longer to build.’

But though he will happily customise the cars, their spirit is firmly rooted in the original machine. ‘We don't add unnecessary accessories or overbuild our cars. We build them the same way Land Rover would have built them coming off the Solihull assembly line, but with some much-needed upgrades to ensure they will last forever and be comfortable to drive.’

This, then, is no blinging-up exercise, which is what fired Imogen’s imagination. ‘The fact that Daniel’s cars are so authentic, so true to the original spirit of the Defender, is what I love,’ she says. ‘Eastnor is all about celebrating authentic character in design, and I see a kindred spirit in the Brooklyn Coachworks.’

At breakfast in New York, Imogen and Daniel discussed how his customers regard Eastnor as a sort of alma mater for their cars, and the two hatched a plan to bring some of the Brooklyn Coachworks restored Defenders to the castle so that people can drive them on the very tracks where new models are tested.

It’s a lovely, ambitious idea. We will keep you posted as to how it progresses. brooklyncoachworks.com