Recycling Land Rovers for profit and country
The old saying 'one man's junk is another man's treasure' couldn't be more true in the case of UK entrepreneur Peter Hobson and his vast collection of scrapped Land Rovers. Hobson runs a factory refurbishing old parts pulled from wrecked Land Rover SUVs and reselling them as spares.
"I've got the largest Land Rover parts store outside Land Rover," 60-year-old Hobson reveals about his store of spares, amassed over the last two decades. Some of the parts, like whole engines, cost upwards of £7,000 ($14,600) and then there are the complete cars. In all, Hobson estimates the value of his collection to be close to £25m ($50m).
So sought after is his services that he's even been hired by military groups around the world for the supply of armored vehicles. "I supply many armies around the world," Hobson boasts, with armies from Turkey, Jordan, Australia and a string of Middle-Eastern nations all listed as clients. Of course, Hobson's main client is the UK Ministry of Defence. It is a British company after all.
[Source: BBC]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
LloydChiro 5:42PM (11/09/2007)
If Autoblog is really into stories like this, we've got a nice Pick 'n Pull in our town.
And, you can get parts for most makes and models, not just Rovers.
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500 8:06PM (11/09/2007)
"Hobson runs a factory refurbishing old parts pulled from wrecked Land Rover SUVs and reselling them as spares."
Yeah, it's called a junkyard. Hardly a new concept.
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CMDR 9:51AM (11/10/2007)
Neat
Looks like the only good parts on those rovers are the tires.
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Paul P. 10:34AM (11/10/2007)
I knew they were unreliable, but I would have never thought that one could make a successful salvage business out of just Land Rovers. Must be even worse than I thought. :-/
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Mike 7:11PM (11/13/2007)
The military landies are known and prized around the world for their reliability and endurance, and have little to do with their soccer-mom road going cousins. The SAS use them for extended missions behind enemy lines, and its not patriotism - they ditched the British SA80 rifle in favor of the more reliable M16.
priusguy 5:18PM (11/10/2007)
The picture looks like it shows mostly military vehicles. Probably makes sense in the UK.
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