Foley Defender 130 Game Viewer
Foley Specialist Vehicles' Defender 130 Td5 game viewer built for the giraffe park at Chessington World of Adventures, T69 JSS: a sand-painted two-door cab ahead of a high-sided open body with tiered bench seats and grab rails, under a dark green canvas canopy on tubular hoops, from which visitors hand-feed the giraffes.
History
Chessington World of Adventures, the theme park and zoo in Surrey, runs a giraffe-feeding experience in which a small party is driven into the giraffe paddock and feeds the animals from the back of a Land Rover. The vehicle for it was built by Foley Specialist Vehicles, the Land Rover conversion firm best known for its six-wheel Defenders, on a Defender 130 Td5 chassis — the long 130-inch wheelbase giving room for three tiers of bench seating behind the cab.
T69 JSS, a 1999-registered Td5, was rebuilt in the manner of an African safari game viewer: the crew cab cut back to two doors, an open high-sided body with tiered benches and grab rails in place of the rear cab and tray, sand-coloured tubular hoops carrying a dark green canvas canopy over both cab and body, everything painted sand, sand steel wheels on mud-terrain tyres, a chequer-plate side step and a rear step for boarding, and mudflaps all round. Foley's own page records that the vehicle had been with Chessington for four years and was 'still going strong' when photographed. It is a one-off; the year of the conversion is not stated.
Imagery
Registry record
- Manufacturer
- Foley Specialist Vehicles ↗Land Rover (Defender 130 Td5); conversion by Foley Specialist Vehicles Ltd
- Manufactured
- T69 JSS, registered 1999; conversion date not stated
- Modifier / coachbuilder
- Foley Specialist Vehicles ↗
- Engine type
- 2.5 L Td5 five-cylinder turbo-diesel
- Production run
- 1 (one-off for Chessington World of Adventures)
- Country of origin
- United Kingdom
- Operated in
- United Kingdom
- Status
- in service (per Foley, after four years with the park)
Catalogue data
- Record kind
- Named model
- Model line
- Defender
- Wheels
- 4
- Nominal wheelbase
- 130″
Catalogue fields describe the vehicle's structure and body as this registry records it. They are not certified factory measurements, and no performance figures are published here.
Sources & citations
Researched sources
- Special builds — Defender 130 Game viewer TD5 built for Chessington World of Adventures Giraffe Park; with CWA for four years ↗ — Foley Specialist Vehicles Ltd (accessed 2026-09-11)
Catalogue references
- https://www.foleysv.com/special.html https://www.foleysv.com/special.html ↗
Registry record updated 2026-09-11T06:34:05.347Z · status: researched