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Armourer, Coachbuilder, Converter, Defence contractor · Hamble, Hampshire, United Kingdom · until 1997

Glover Webb

Hampshire specialist vehicle builder — formerly Glover, Webb and Liversidge, a maker of commercial and municipal bodywork — that turned to armour in the mid-1980s. It built the British Army's armoured Land Rover One-Ten APV for Northern Ireland, the Hornet light assault vehicle, the Tactica APC, and the SAS's Desert Patrol Vehicle 'Pinkies'. GKN bought it in 1994 and closed the Hamble works in 1997.

History

The firm's origins are the weakest part of this record. It traded as Glover, Webb and Liversidge Ltd, recorded by Grace's Guide from a 1959 Commercial Motor reference as a maker of commercial vehicle bodywork and trailers at the Marlborough Works, Old Kent Road, London, and it later worked from Hamble in Hampshire, on Southampton Water. Its early catalogue was ordinary enough: bus, van and truck bodies, trailers, and municipal vehicles including Karrier Binmaster and Musketeer refuse collectors. No reliable founding date has been established, which is why this entry is held at draft.

By the mid-1980s, shortened to Glover Webb, the company had moved decisively into armoured and special-purpose vehicles. Its armoured Land Rover One-Ten APV — Armoured Patrol Vehicle, nicknamed the 'Piglet' in service — went into production in 1986, and roughly 100 were delivered to the British Army for Operation Banner in Northern Ireland, serving alongside the composite-bodied Snatch. The company also built the Hornet, a light assault vehicle on the Defender 4x4 with a 12.7 mm machine gun and 7.62 mm secondary armament, offered with the Rover V8 petrol or a turbodiesel, and the Tuareg long-range desert patrol vehicle.

Its most celebrated Land Rover work was for the Special Air Service. By the mid-1980s the regiment's Series IIA 'Pink Panther' desert cars were two decades old, and Glover Webb worked with the SAS to develop a successor on the coil-sprung One Ten High Capacity Pick-Up: roof, doors and windscreen stripped, a stout roll bar behind the front seats, long-range tankage, extensive stowage, a commander's GPMG forward and a rear ring mount for a GPMG, .50-calibre Browning, 40 mm grenade launcher or MILAN post. Thirty-three were ordered, deliveries to Hereford beginning in November 1985. Formally the Desert Patrol Vehicle, they inherited the old nickname 'Pinkies' and made their name hunting Scud launchers behind Iraqi lines in 1991.

Glover Webb's own design work culminated in the Tactica, a privately developed semi-monocoque armoured personnel carrier launched commercially in 1988 and later built in forward-control form as an EOD team vehicle for the British Army in Ulster; Tacticas also served with the Ministry of Defence Police, the United Nations force in Cyprus and Indonesia's Brimob. GKN Defence took the company over at the end of 1994 and ran it as a subsidiary until closing it down in late 1997, transferring work to the former GKN Defence facility at Telford in Shropshire. In 1998 the armoured vehicle business passed to Alvis, which was in turn absorbed into what is now BAE Systems; the Tactica has since been marketed as the Alvis Tactica.

Imagery

A preserved SAS Land Rover 110 Desert Patrol Vehicle — the Glover Webb conversion of the One Ten High Capacity Pick-Up, known to its crews as a 'Pinkie'.
A preserved SAS Land Rover 110 Desert Patrol Vehicle — the Glover Webb conversion of the One Ten High Capacity Pick-Up, known to its crews as a 'Pinkie'. Alf van Beem, via Wikimedia Commons · CC0 ↗
Not a Land Rover: a Tactica protected vehicle of the Ministry of Defence Police. The Tactica was Glover Webb's own semi-monocoque design, launched in 1988 and later sold as the Alvis Tactica.
Not a Land Rover: a Tactica protected vehicle of the Ministry of Defence Police. The Tactica was Glover Webb's own semi-monocoque design, launched in 1988 and later sold as the Alvis Tactica. Archivey, via Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 3.0 ↗

Vehicles in this registry (1)

Sources & citations

Maker record updated 2026-09-10T04:48:16.004Z · status: draft