RAC Road Service Series I 80 Hard Top
RAC Road Service Land Rover Series I 80-inch hard top KAD 265 in the Club's blue Road Service scheme with a bumper spotlight and TOWING sign — one of the Royal Automobile Club's first four-wheeled road patrol vehicles of the early 1950s, documented by Oxford Diecast's models of the real vehicle.
History
The Royal Automobile Club's road patrols were motorcycle combinations until the early 1950s, when the Club began putting patrolmen into Land Rovers that could carry proper tools, tow a car and work in any weather. The 80-inch hard tops were among its first four-wheeled patrol vehicles, painted the RAC's dark blue with the Club's diamond badge and ROAD SERVICE lettering, and fitted with a spotlight on the bumper for night work and a TOWING sign to warn following traffic when a car was on the rope.
KAD 265 is recorded by Oxford Diecast's 1:43 model LAN180006 (and its 1:76 counterpart), the reference here: RAC blue all over with blue wheels, ROAD SERVICE in white on the board below the windscreen, the RAC diamond over ROAD SERVICE on the hard-top sides, the diamond on the left wing front and the black KAD 265 plate on the right, a TOWING sign and a spotlight on the bumper, and the spare stowed inside rather than on the bonnet. The registry model reproduces that vehicle in the Breakdown group; the size of the RAC's early Land Rover fleet is not given in the source.
Imagery
Registry record
- Manufacturer
- Rover Company (Land Rover Series I 80-inch hard top)
- Manufactured
- Series I 80-inch, early 1950s; KAD (Gloucestershire) registration
- Modifier / coachbuilder
- Royal Automobile Club (road patrol fit and livery)
- Engine type
- Rover 1.6/2.0 L inlet-over-exhaust petrol
- Production run
- unknown (early RAC Land Rover patrol fleet)
- Country of origin
- United Kingdom
- Operated in
- United Kingdom
- Status
- unknown
Catalogue data
- Record kind
- Named model
- Model line
- Series I
- Wheels
- 4
- Nominal wheelbase
- 80″
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 1 80 Hard Top RAC (Oxford Diecast LAN180006) ↗ — Oxford Diecast (accessed 2026-09-12)
Catalogue references
- https://www.oxforddiecast.co.uk/products/land-rover-series-1-80-hard-top-rac-lan180006 https://www.oxforddiecast.co.uk/products/land-rover-series-1-80-hard-top-rac-lan180006 ↗
Registry record updated 2026-09-12T06:34:10.996Z · status: researched