Post Office Recovery
A Post Office Recovery Land Rover — a Series IIA 88-inch hard top of 1969–70, XAH 758H, in the Post Office's red with gold and yellow, POST OFFICE RECOVERY lettered along the roof edge and a yellow beacon on the roof: the breakdown vehicle that fetched the Post Office's own vans home.
Factory colours
- Post Office Red
Codes on hover. Hex values are representative approximations of period paint unless a source states a measured value.
History
The Post Office ran the largest vehicle fleet in Britain, and a fleet that size needs its own breakdown service. The recovery Land Rovers were the light end of it: a short-wheelbase hard top that could reach a stranded mail van or telephone engineer's vehicle on any road and tow it back to the depot, marked so that nobody mistook it for a delivery van.
The documented vehicle is XAH 758H, a Series IIA 88-inch hard top registered in 1969–70, in the corporate red with gold and yellow, POST OFFICE RECOVERY printed in white along the roof edge, a yellow beacon in the centre of the roof and red interior seating with black fittings. It is known through the 1:43 and 1:76 models Oxford Diecast produced of it, sold by the Postal Museum among others; the museum's retail listing is the reference this registry's model was built from, and no photograph of the full-size vehicle, nor the conversion builder or the depot it served, has been found in the sources consulted. A late Series IIA 88 of this date carried the 2.25-litre four in petrol or diesel form — the Post Office specified diesel as standard for its engineering Land Rovers, but which this recovery vehicle had is not recorded.
Imagery
Registry record
- Manufacturer
- Land Rover
- Manufactured
- XAH 758H, registered 1969–70
- Engine type
- 2.25 L petrol or diesel inline-four (Series IIA 88); not stated in the sources
- Production run
- Unknown — one vehicle documented
- Country of origin
- United Kingdom
- Operated in
- United Kingdom
- Status
- unknown
Catalogue data
- Record kind
- Named model
- Model line
- Series IIA
- Wheels
- 4
- Nominal wheelbase
- 88″
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
- Land Rover Series IIA SWB Hard Top Royal Mail Post Office Recovery, 43LR2AS002 (XAH 758H, 1969/70; corporate red, gold and yellow; Post Office Recovery lettering in white along the roof edge; yellow roof beacon; red interior with black fittings) ↗ — Oxford Diecast (accessed 2026-09-11)
- Post Office Recovery Land Rover 1:43 scale model ↗ — The Postal Museum Shop (accessed 2026-09-11)
- Land Rover Hard Top SWB Series 1, GPO — Engineering Instruction B 3610 (diesel standard for Post Office engineering Land Rovers) ↗ — BT/GPO Telephones (britishtelephones.com) (accessed 2026-09-11)
- Land Rover series (Series IIA 1961–1971, 2.25 L petrol and diesel fours; 109-inch station wagon) ↗ — Wikipedia (accessed 2026-09-11)
Catalogue references
- https://shop.postalmuseum.org/products/post-office-recovery-land-rover-1-43-scale-model https://shop.postalmuseum.org/products/post-office-recovery-land-rover-1-43-scale-model ↗
Registry record updated 2026-09-11T03:15:39.538Z · status: draft