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00:00we're in a bit of a period time machine here in the age of the machine every decade is defined
00:13by its engineering masterpieces so join me on a journey through time as I experience the great
00:20machines that changed people's lives and shaped modern Britain
00:30the 1950s were in my view a great time to be British oh yes we were picking up the pieces from the Second
00:51World War and building a brave new nation ID cards were consigned to the past
00:59rationing came to an end tea with milk and sugar glorious and we had a lovely new young Queen
01:14but despite victory in the war the great British Empire was coming to an end with new superpowers
01:22to the East and West threatening our peace and prosperity and it was up to Britain's engineers
01:29to design and build the machines that would secure our future in a new world order
01:36ah 1950s London town a city on the move or not as the case may be oh do come along get a move on
01:53there's one thing that bothers me about driving in London it's the congestion
01:58the 50s saw car ownership double and city streets became more jam than ever so London Transport decided
02:14to build a new modern bus to entice Londoners back onto public transport and this is it this is an AEC
02:25route master probably the most famous public service vehicle of all time
02:30an enduring icon of London a machine that was designed to last little more than a decade but
02:43thanks to its great design ruled the streets for nearly 50 years
02:47so how could such a brilliant and futuristic machine have been produced at a time of such
02:56massive national debt it all began with one of London transport's chief engineers Albert Durrant
03:05whose ambition far exceeded what he was actually asked to build Durrant's task was to build a bus
03:13a bus that would carry more passengers for less fuel than existing motor buses he was also determined
03:19to build a bus that was safer and easier to drive while matching the comfort levels of the current range of
03:25Austin and Morris cars so how did he plan to achieve this miracle using war technology bombers to be
03:34precise during the war Durrant had witnessed mass production of Halifax bombers in the London
03:42transport bus factory bombers had to be fast strong and light so they used loads of this stuff aluminium
03:51attached to lightweight frames
03:53so Durrant decided to build his new bus like a Halifax bomber taking the basic shape and design of an
04:06existing bus the RT and radically reworking it so the RT has a separate chassis and a body built on top
04:16the chassis supports everything
04:20the RT chassis and running gear weighed a massive three and three-quarter tons if Durrant could lose
04:29some of that weight his new bus could carry far more passengers if you do away with the chassis the
04:35body has to be much more rigid because not only does it have to support itself it has to support
04:41everything else the engine the gearbox the steering the suspension everything like an aircraft Durrant gave
04:50his route master a rigid lightweight frame called a monocoque onto which the aluminium panels were mounted
04:56with no heavy chassis under here the route master could carry 15% more passengers than the RT for the
05:04same overall weight very clever with his economical goal achieved the route master hit the streets in
05:13February 1956 and all the other elements that made this bus a masterpiece were unveiled a dream about
05:22to be fulfilled yes when you get behind the wheel it's hard to believe this is a 50-year-old design
05:40i'm really enjoying it you really do feel
05:45quite something when you're driving a route master and that's because Durrant made it a whole lot easier
05:50and safer to drive than any bus before using the latest car technology from an automatic gearbox to power steering
06:03power steering is absolutely wonderful if this was uh unpowered steering i think you'd build some arm
06:09muscles that you didn't know you had
06:11you had to drive for the passengers like this odd fellow it had softer suspension big windows
06:20built-in heating you could even smoke in those days
06:27Durrant really took his goal of enticing people back onto the buses very seriously
06:32but there was one crucial test that would really show whether Durrant had nailed the perfect bus
06:43a test that every new driver had to perform before they took to the streets
06:47no problem there well done mr durrant well you didn't really think they'd let me do that did you
07:06a truly great british machine
07:10with a body like an aircraft the handling of a car and all the latest mod cons
07:15the route master was a bussing revelation
07:19in the early 50s this was a nation hungry for change
07:23churchill returned to power promising a new era of freedom
07:27wartime bomb sites were being rebuilt
07:31modernism was back in vogue in architecture fashion and design
07:36it was out with the old and in with the new
07:40though sometimes all these changes weren't entirely thought through
07:45for over a hundred years britain had boasted the finest railway system
07:50and the greatest fastest steam locomotives in the world
07:55but in the 50s some bright spark decided to chuck them all out
07:58in the mid-1950s the british transport commission decided to do away with old-fashioned steam
08:12believing the clean efficient future for trains was electrification
08:16electrification sounds great in theory but it would have meant installing overhead wires or
08:27an electric third rail across britain's 30 000 or so kilometer rail network at a vast cost the
08:34country simply couldn't afford so the diesel engine was called in as a short-term stopgap
08:40the problem was that existing diesels were good for shunting but far too slow for passenger trains
08:52we needed more power and we got it from a rather unlikely source the admiralty that's
08:58right britain's best plan to replace steam was to build a locomotive with a boat engine brilliant
09:08the engine was the napier deltick originally designed for the navy's fast attack craft
09:15i've come to the deltick preservation society at barrow hill near chesterfield
09:20to find out how it evolved into one of the most extraordinary engines ever built
09:30here we have a relatively standard six-cylinder diesel engine with a heavy lump on top
09:35this is the cylinder head and it seals in the huge pressure generated by the igniting fuel air mixture
09:41if you take the cylinders and turn them to face each other you don't need a heavy lump on top
09:45it's called an opposed piston engine napier's first version the culverin had six cylinders each with two
09:56pistons so as the two pistons come together they compress the air to such a high temperature
10:02that when diesel is injected here it burns and fires the two pistons apart turning two crankshafts
10:11it gives a much greater power to weight ratio than a conventional diesel engine but the admiralty
10:17wanted even more power with the least possible weight so napier got even more creative
10:27with a crazy design that links three six cylinder opposed piston engines together
10:31in a triangular or deltic design one in here two three so now we have 36 pistons but only 18
10:40cylinders driving three crankshafts again no cylinder heads required madness or genius the new 18
10:50cylinder turbocharged deltic boasted 3100 horsepower doubling the power to weight ratio of its rivals
10:59great for the navy's high-speed boats and just maybe it could solve the problem of replacing steam with a
11:06fast powerful diesel locomotive in the late 50s napier's parent company english electric unveiled their
11:15deltic powered prototype the dp1 this british rail class 55 locomotive is the production version
11:26and right now i'm going to have the opportunity to drive this icon of british engineering
11:31i'll be under the expert tuition of mike hallam rudd who spent nearly three decades preserving deltic locos
11:44the engines are nearly 50 years old so mike's kindly letting me prime the oil
11:4980 strokes on that pump and that's that's adequate to do it so while you do that i'm going for a cup of
11:5530. 80 strokes okay i'll see you next year that's one stroke that's two strokes
12:0338 39 40. 73 74 75 i won't have any strength to drive the actual thing
12:26okay chris that'll do fine thank you great
12:29finally the moment of truth
12:50i move the reverse around to engine only locomotive brake on train brake to running
12:56okay okay you're now ready to i'm ready to go into forward
13:10eight miles an hour 10 miles an hour
13:20106 tons on the move here just a little bit of juice that's all we gave it
13:27the magnificent deltics gave britain its first regular 100 mile per hour diesel passenger service
13:35effortlessly slashing an hour off the run from london to edinburgh
13:40move over steam looks like diesel's here to stay
13:45for me the class 55 was a true concord of the railway system
13:49eventually the brilliant deltic was replaced by improved conventional diesel locos
13:57but this masterpiece of british ingenuity saved the railways in their time of need and changed the
14:03course of transport history
14:05even today
14:08even today sixty percent of our railway network still uses diesel locomotives
14:15thanks to those incredible engines diesels were clearly no short-term stopgap
14:20using wartime technology britain's engineers got britain back on the move in style
14:32there was even a diesel-powered flying scotsman and whether by road or rail the british holiday
14:40reached an all-time high
14:41the new spirit of the times fell a shadow of fear
14:54the fear of nuclear war
14:56the balance of power was changing and the british people looked to their politicians and their
15:02engineers to secure them a place in a new world order
15:06just south of manchester in october 1957 at a place called jodrell bank an engineering icon unlike
15:23anything seen before in britain was being built and was about to give us a central role in the cold war
15:29this amazing structure was the realization of one man's dreams
15:37it was another brilliant reinvention of war technology for peaceful and scientific goals
15:46during world war ii physicist bernard lovell helped pioneer airborne radar allowing bomber
15:54crews to detect their targets in the dead of night with radio waves
15:59after the war lovell turned his expertise with radio waves to a much more peaceful use astronomy
16:10he raised nearly 300 000 pounds in government grants over three million in today's money to
16:16build the largest and greatest radio telescope in the world
16:22a fantastic ambitious machine designed to uncover the mysteries of the universe
16:29it's the size of the albert hall with more than seven thousand steel panels the telescope weighs over
16:36three thousand tons
16:40ten electric motors aim the dish towards any point in the sky
16:45to track distant cosmic objects with extreme precision
16:48the whole amazing structure works like a giant radio set
17:03welcome to hancock's half hour a pint why that's very nearly an armful
17:08radios receive invisible radio waves from nearby transmitters and decode them into sound
17:20lovell's dish picks up radio waves too but the signals it receives have traveled from cosmic objects
17:26millions or billions of light years away by the time they reach earth they need a giant dish to catch them
17:33before they're decoded into astronomical images
17:38with a radio telescope astronomers can see objects that are invisible to an optical telescope
17:44and over the last 50 years lovell's telescope has made hundreds of important astronomical discoveries
17:50including quasars contributing to our knowledge of the universe
17:54but in the mid-1950s before the dish was even complete the british military decided they had a more important use for it
18:06and insisted that lovell convert it into a giant radar that could warn them of incoming soviet bomber or missile attacks
18:13making these top secret changes put lovell's construction disastrously over budget
18:22and in big trouble with his financiers the public accounts committee unaware of lovell's secret mission
18:29threatened to lock him up lovell knew he needed a miracle to save the project
18:34and himself that miracle arrived on october the 4th 1957
18:48hello the russians have launched what i'll get onto it straight away
18:53the ussr had launched a 23-inch diameter machine called sputnik the world's first satellite
19:06the space race had begun sputnik was harmless in itself transmitting a radio signal back to earth
19:14with information about the temperature and pressure of its surroundings for soviet scientists to study
19:20anyone in theory could pick up sputnik's signal with one of these newfangled transistor radios
19:28just get the right frequency and you could hear sputnik bleep from space 500 miles above
19:35but the missile that launched sputnik was far from harmless and much harder to track
19:42sir bernard lovell who still works here more than 50 years on recalls the dramatic events of october 1957
19:51this man in the air ministry has phoned me and said that telescope of yours do you realize
19:58that there we have nothing in england and there is nothing in the west that can detect the carrier
20:04rocket which is placed put against space because the carrier rocket is the ballistic weapon
20:11a ballistic missile would allow the soviets to launch a nuclear strike anywhere on the planet
20:16so britain needed the dish to track the rocket but the dish wasn't ready
20:25enormous emergency within a matter of days we
20:33first of all got the telescope working from the control system in this room
20:37and then obtained a memorable echo from from the sputnik right moving at 17 000 miles an hour over
20:48the lake history sputnik saved us
20:54overnight lovell's dish became a national sensation
20:57and a vital piece of britain's cold war defenses as our early warning system against a nuclear attack
21:07i mean a single radio telescope like that despite its massive size actually has quite a blurry view
21:12um it's looking at a patch of sky maybe something like the size of the full moon the crucial thing
21:16was that we knew where those launch stations were we knew where the russians had those missiles and so
21:21this telescope was able to point towards that direction and look for a rocket coming up look
21:26for an echo from that rocket as it as it was launched
21:31lovell's telescope proved itself to be a truly great british machine both in the cold war and in
21:37the years of peaceful astronomy since
21:42but searching for signals from outer space wasn't enough for the superpowers of the 50s oh no
21:49they were intent on playing an insane cold war game
21:56the theory went that if the soviets launched a nuclear attack
22:02we would quickly detect it and launch a retaliatory attack of our own the warheads would pass each
22:09other in mid-flight the result would be a massive loss of life on both sides it's called the theory of
22:20mutually assured destruction or mad the hope was that this would prevent either side from
22:26launching an attack ever it really was madness for britain to be a nuclear power we needed the bomb
22:33which we had but also the means to deliver it carrying it higher and further than any existing bomb
22:41to be dropped on russian soil
22:55to do just that british engineers came up with one of the most extraordinary aircraft the world had ever
23:16seen
23:23i've come to bruntingthorpe aerodrome where a team of engineers are hard at work saving the last flight
23:29worthy specimen of britain's greatest cold war bomber
23:36to me the vulcan bomber says the future has landed 1950s style it's like a spaceship from a dan
23:42dare comic book it was built to play a deadly game of nuclear who dares wins pointing east ready to
23:49launch at a moment's notice to scare the soviets from launching an attack
24:01the brief was to design a bomber that could fly 10 miles above the ground to avoid enemy radar while
24:07carrying a four and a half ton bomb to a target nearly two thousand miles away
24:15but pistons and propellers would never get the vulcan to the high speed and altitude it depended on for
24:21success it relied on another great world war ii invention the jet engine
24:29perfect for the vulcan because it really comes into its own at high altitude
24:38as you fly higher the air becomes thinner and propellers struggle for grip
24:45most second world war fighters hit the ceiling at around 35 000 feet
24:52jet thrust comes from high speed gases being forced out of the back allowing jet aircraft to fly much
24:58higher without the losing grip problem in the thinner air drag on your aircraft is greatly reduced
25:04which means you can go a lot faster and burn less fuel jet engines made possible a vastly different
25:11breed of aircraft in 1947 roy chadwick the brains behind the hugely successful world war ii lancaster bomber
25:21sketched a radical new design to meet the government's requirements for a nuclear bomber
25:26chadwick's first draft looked something like this a pure triangular or delta wing with engines built
25:37into the wings and originally no tail at all sadly chadwick died shortly after completing his famous sketch
25:45but his idea stuck and the avro company who built the lancaster pushed on with the project
25:51in 1952 avro started flight testing their giant flying wing the type 698 with pilot roly folk at the controls
26:07the vulcan was a step into the unknown there were no sophisticated monitoring devices
26:13they simply used a cine camera to record data from the flight controls
26:22the team spent four years perfecting the delta wing technology
26:26until the vulcan was ready for active service
26:36the b1 as it was known had four olympus jet engines generating roughly three times more power
26:42than the best piston engines at the time
26:47the swept back wings allowed the vulcan to fly at over 500 miles an hour
26:55the massive wings generated plenty of lift to carry the vulcan and its bomb load up to 50 000 feet
27:01out of reach of enemy radar
27:03the design was a huge success
27:13a thrilling fearsome symbol of britain's nuclear deterrent
27:20now i can't actually fly in this great aircraft because the vulcan doesn't carry passengers
27:24however i'm extremely privileged to be able to witness the final few stages before getting this
27:31magnificent aircraft back into the air
27:37taf stone is chief engineer of the team dedicated to preserving this piece of britain's heritage
27:44very well thanks so tap what was the idea behind today what we're doing today is the anti-deterioration
27:51checks basically every 28 days we've got to run the engines fire up all the flying controls and basically
27:56just make sure everything's working uh working well so taff the last remaining flying vulcan
28:01coming to work on this legendary machine every day must be more of a calling than a job it is it's
28:07such an iconic aircraft and it's it's basic engineering it's not your little black boxes telling
28:12you what to do you actually got to know the aircraft and treat her well
28:15engine start master set to one engine start master on you have ignition taff is going to be running
28:25the engines one at a time set to one jp limiter set to switch on okay then we go on for a start on number four
28:33depending on the weather conditions we may get what's known as the vulcan howl it's a unique sound
29:03you can feel that howl it's going to go through here 16 600 pounds of thrust shaking my very foundations
29:23that was quite a howl yeah i mean standing there you feel your whole body vibrating
29:28i was like the whole earth was sort of shaking away through the body you know your rib cage is
29:32about to disintegrate you know say with all four going it must be just something else fabulous experience
29:39really was
29:44from 1956 to 1969 raf vulcans were kept on constant alert ready to be scrambled at the first sign of an
29:53incoming soviet attack it was a tense waiting game thankfully they never dropped a nuclear bomb
30:04and were eventually replaced by nuclear-powered submarines
30:10they did however see non-nuclear action in the south atlantic
30:14during the 1982 falklands conflict the vulcan carried out what was at the time the longest bombing
30:24raid in history 8 000 miles over 16 hours the vulcan despite being nearly three decades old
30:32was the only raf machine up to the job
30:38a fitting swan song for such a great machine
30:41the vulcan helped give britain a say in cold war politics at a cost of tens of millions of pounds to
30:49the taxpayer but meanwhile a completely separate group of aviation pioneers had been developing an
30:57aircraft that could make the country millions
31:03in a highly lucrative international business
31:06london tower this is yoke peter requesting permission for takeoff over
31:15ah yes peter you're cleared for takeoff over
31:18just after three o'clock in the afternoon of may the 2nd 1952 something totally extraordinary happened
31:27britain started a revolution
31:29as the first ever civilian passengers took to the air in a jet aircraft
31:47the visionary behind this aircraft had just given his nation a huge head start in what was fast
31:52becoming a multi-million pound global business international air travel
32:01jeffrey de haviland was one of britain's greatest aviation pioneers
32:05known for his belief that if it didn't look right it wasn't right
32:09he designed and built some of britain's finest aircraft
32:11in the late 40s he gave the tough job of designing the world's first jet airliner to ronald bishop
32:23the man behind the brilliant de haviland mosquito bomber one of britain's most vital wartime aircraft
32:32bishop's next challenge was to design an aircraft that would fly higher faster and further than the best
32:39piston engine propeller driven airliners ever built and this is a development model of what went on to
32:45become the comet the comet like the vulcan a few years later would use jet engines buried in the wing
32:52roots flying at high altitude where reduced drag from the thin air improved speed and fuel economy
32:59but in such thin air passengers wouldn't be able to breathe and it would be rather cold
33:04bishop wanted his passengers to have a luxury experience flying in comfort with unrivaled
33:11views through large square windows but you could hardly expect them to wear heated military style
33:17flight suits and oxygen masks so the comet would be built with a pressurized cabin
33:23but that was a tough engineering challenge
33:25the airliner is like a reverse submarine go too deep in a submarine and you could be crushed
33:38go too high in a pressurized airplane and you could explode
33:48at the intended 40 000 feet altitude the comet's lightweight aluminium skin will be stretched from the
33:53inside like a giant balloon
33:58so bishop had to design an aircraft strong enough to withstand the pressure
34:03yet light enough to reach high altitude with the power that was available
34:09the ghost engines bishop had at his disposal each produced about 5 000 pounds of thrust
34:1550 percent more than rival piston engines but only 10 percent of the thrust of a modern jumbo jet
34:20the comet with these engines would struggle to reach its target cruising altitude of 40 000 feet
34:32so the fuselage skin was made as thin as was considered safe
34:39the comet's design was a careful balance between power weight strength and safety it will be flying in
34:45a realm that was untested and unknown to passenger aircraft
34:49but contrary to popular myth the comet was extremely thoroughly tested before its maiden commercial flight
35:00the 2nd of may 1952 worldwide success and vast potential profits all hung on this first flight
35:0936 paying passengers boarded comet call sign yoke peter at london airport now known as heathrow
35:17london tower this is yoke peter requesting permission for takeoff over
35:21ah yes peter you're clear for takeoff over
35:23just after 3pm comet yoke peter took off from london heathrow bound for johannesburg
35:44tickets cost 315 pounds return the same as for the less luxurious slower piston-engined airliners
35:53this is your captain speaking ladies and gentlemen we're now cruising at a speed of 500 miles an
35:58hour at an altitude of 40 000 feet beat that piston-engined aircraft
36:07the jet age had begun with britain at the helm
36:11over the next two glorious years airlines from around the globe placed orders for the comet
36:17a triumph for de haviland and britain on an international scale
36:23american aviation magazine went so far as to say whether we like it or not the british are giving
36:28the u.s a drubbing in jet transport
36:34but then disaster struck
36:36on the 10th of january 1954 a comet flight from rome plunged into the sea three months later
36:48on april the 8th the same happened to another comet 56 people lost their lives in the two crashes
36:54the nation was in mourning
36:56wreckage from the first crash was taken to the royal aircraft establishment in farnborough
37:07where it was assembled piece by piece for examination
37:14investigators suspected what's known as explosive decompression
37:18which is what happens when a pressurized container is pierced and rips itself apart
37:26the wreckage showed no signs of a bomb blast so the prime suspect had to be structural failure
37:37to test their theory and save the future of the comet investigators devised an extraordinary
37:43full-scale experiment on an intact comet testing the cabin with compressed air in the open air
37:51could destroy vital evidence pinpointing the exact location of the failure
37:56so what the investigators did was they built a tank around a comet aircraft and then filled the hull
38:02of the comet and the tank full of water
38:10they hope that if the fuselage failed the water would contain the damage
38:17like so allowing them to accurately pinpoint the source of the problem
38:21by july 1954 the investigators had their culprit
38:33this fantastic aircraft was foiled by one tiny and seemingly insignificant detail
38:39the square shape of the windows this increased stress levels in the skin at the corner speeding up metal
38:46for the comet
38:48under the high stress is tiny cracks on the edges of the rivet holes grew eventually leading to a
38:56catastrophic failure and explosive decompression
39:01for the comet as a machine the cure was straightforward a thicker stronger skin rounded windows and improved
39:09engines to carry the extra weight but for the comet as a commercial airliner it was already too late
39:17the time lost fixing it handed the americans the lead in commercial jet aviation we never won it back
39:23the de havilland comet was a great trailblazer sadly it blazed a trail that others alone would follow
39:31and it was not the solution to britain's economic woes but solutions were found
39:37in the 1950s there was one great machine that for me more than any other was the shining example of the engineering of the era
39:49born of post-war ingenuity and materials
39:54it helped rebuild britain
39:57by taking the world by storm
40:00half car half tractor it was designed for farmers the world over
40:04but has been used with a passion by everyone from royalty to extreme explorers
40:13it was of course the land rover
40:17marketed as the farmer's friend it was built using post-war leftovers
40:21a marriage of ingenuity and necessity designed as a short-term quick fix for an ailing british car company
40:28so how did a hurriedly improvised post-war stopgap become an international success
40:36and in my humble opinion the greatest british workhorse ever built
40:43in the years following world war ii factories struggled from ongoing shortages of all sorts of raw materials
40:51including steel
41:00one company that was seriously feeling the post-war pinch was rover
41:04which was famous for making prestige cars like this p3
41:09now this p3 is made mainly out of steel steel was scarce and rover couldn't physically make enough p3s to survive
41:21steel was only allocated to companies that exported their products rover didn't so they needed to come
41:27up with a machine to sell overseas
41:33it just so happened that rover's technical director morris wilkes was using a war surplus
41:38u.s army willys jeep to get around his holiday home on anglesey
41:44although wilkes hated to admit it the americans ingenious four-wheel drive jeep
41:49was brilliant for odd jobs on rough ground and much faster than dragging out a tractor
41:56but spare jeep parts were becoming hard to get hold of
42:00one easter while on holiday wilkes had a brainwave
42:04why not design his own version of the jeep for rover to build and sell overseas
42:09he sketched his idea in the sand for his brother spencer who happened to be managing director of rover
42:18it was unlike anything rover had ever built before
42:22but
42:23spencer was sold so they trundled off to rover hq to present the idea to the board
42:29this is block one of what was then rover's solely hull factory where the wilkes brothers had their offices
42:43i'm here to ask land rover historian roger craythorne just how easy it was for them to persuade the board
42:56but this was a total departure really from from the manufacturer of prestige cars wasn't it yes it was
43:02and the company very quickly realized that they needed to do something to create export orders and
43:09they tried to replicate the jeep but not as a military vehicle more of a vehicle for the farming community
43:15so there you have the ideal vehicle to sort of move the hay bales and milk churns during the day and then
43:19take the wife out to the theater of an evening
43:22the wilkes brothers also realized that a lightweight 4x4 would be ideal for the rough roads of the commonwealth
43:29this just might be the export market rover was looking for
43:34but their new machine would have to be extremely tough and reliable in the worst imaginable conditions
43:42while many cars and even the route master bus were switching to monocoque designs
43:46wilkes stuck with a tough steel ladder chassis frame
43:50but rover didn't have enough steel to make the rest of the bodywork
43:54so wilkes turned to a material that was sitting around in plentiful stockpiles after the war
44:00yes you've guessed it aluminium again mostly flat panels with a minimum of shaping nice and easy to make
44:08and you can bash it around dent it scratch it it won't rust
44:12an inspired feature was what they called the power takeoff
44:24with which you could drive all sorts of different tools with the landys engine
44:28great for odd jobs around the farm no tractor required
44:39the design was full of good ideas but the machine was built almost entirely from existing rover stocks
44:45even the engine was straight out of the p3 saloon
44:49so at best the rover board was hoping the new machine would get them through the post-war slump
44:54oh how wrong they were they obviously didn't spend enough time out here all the way down
45:03now how cool does that look with the windscreen down yes a bit of wind in the old face and probably
45:08some mud as well
45:12we have contact and we're away
45:15welcome to the jungle
45:25this is the original jungle track where wilkes put early land rovers through their paces
45:31it's right next to the solihull factory where they were built
45:35this is the stuff
45:37thanks to that combination of heavy steel chassis and lightweight aluminium body
45:42the land rover has a low center of gravity that should make it impossible to topple over
45:47this is what land rovering is all about getting in the muddy lanes through the puddles
45:54we've got a little bit of a slope here boys so hang on tight
45:58the kind of thing you never think a land rover is going to do it but it does fantastic
46:03yes very impressive indeed
46:12within months of its release the land rover was out selling rovers road cars at home and in the
46:18commonwealth a great british icon that has stood the test of time
46:23the land rover and many other brilliant machines of the 50s helped put britain back on her feet
46:33by the end of the decade the average weekly wage had almost doubled and new prime minister harold
46:39macmillan was moved to say that the people had never had it so good it was the dawn of a new era of
46:45prosperity inventiveness and cultural revolution in a country that had found its place in the new world order
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