Shorland Mk4

History

The Shorland family began in the early 1960s, when Frederick Butler of Short Brothers and Harland drew up an armoured patrol car for the Royal Ulster Constabulary on the Series IIA Land Rover 109 in chassis; the first production batch reached the RUC in 1966. The early turreted marks progressed from the Mk1 (67 bhp four-cylinder) through the Mk2 (77 bhp) to the Mk3 of 1972 with a 91 bhp 2.6-litre six, and by mid-1975 more than 400 Shorlands had been sold to some 20 countries.

Alongside the turreted cars, Shorts developed an enclosed armoured patrol vehicle (APV) with a boxy full-height rear body and rear-door access instead of a turret: the SB.301 prototype was completed in 1973 with production following in 1974. The Mk4 generation arrived around 1980, when both the turreted Mk4 car and the SB.401 APV adopted the 3.5-litre Rover V8 petrol engine with strengthened armour. The SB.401 sat on the 109-inch long-wheelbase Series III Land Rover chassis and carried two crew plus six in the rear compartment, with gun ports for the occupants; accommodating the V8 meant moving the radiator forward (the model's key recognition feature) and an armoured roof extractor fan improved ventilation. SB.401s served with Britain and around 17 other nations, and the RUC took five in 1986. This record covers the Mk4/SB.401 enclosed-body configuration and the closely related Defender-based vehicles that followed it, rather than the 1960s-70s turreted marks.

The final Belfast-built generation was the Series 5, redesigned around the coil-sprung Land Rover Defender 110 heavy-duty chassis with permanent four-wheel drive, offered with the 3.5-litre Rover V8 petrol engine or a 2.5-litre Rover Tdi turbo-diesel and retaining about 85 per cent standard Land Rover components. Variants comprised the S52 armoured patrol car, S53 air defence vehicle, S54 anti-hijack vehicle and S55 armoured personnel carrier; the S55 carried eight personnel through two side doors and two rear doors, and roughly 99 were documented for Malaysia (20), Pakistan (24), Sri Lanka (15) and Turkey (40).

The builder, Short Brothers and Harland, reverted to the Short Brothers name in 1977 and became a Bombardier subsidiary in 1989. Late in 1996 Shorts sold the complete Shorland light armoured vehicle line, together with the newer S600, to British Aerospace Australia, whose military vehicle capability passed to Tenix Defence Systems in early 1999; production is complete and the type is no longer marketed. More than 1,000 Shorlands of all marks had been built by 1982, including over 250 Mk4s, and examples survive in preservation - among them the Mk4 SB.401 registered JXI 7163 photographed in the United Kingdom.

Imagery

Registry record

Manufacturer

Short Brothers of Belfast (Short Brothers & Harland until 1977; a Bombardier subsidiary from 1989)

Manufactured

1980-1996 (Mk4/SB.401, then Defender-based S5 series until the line's 1996 sale)

Modifier / coachbuilder

Short Brothers (Shorland armoured vehicle line) ↗

Engine type

3.5 L Rover V8 petrol (Mk4/SB.401); Series 5 offered the 3.5 L V8 or a 2.5 L Rover Tdi turbo-diesel

Production run

~250+ Mk4-generation vehicles; >1,000 Shorlands of all marks by 1982 (S55 APC: ~99 documented)

Country of origin

United Kingdom (Belfast, Northern Ireland)

Status

out of production; examples preserved

Catalogue data

Record kind

Named model

Model line

Defender

Wheels

4

Base catalogue fields are exported from the Difflocked game. In-game physics values are arcade tuning, not certified historical measurements, and are deliberately not shown as specifications here.

Sources & citations

Researched sources

• Shorland armoured car ↗ — Wikipedia (accessed 2026-09-09)
• Shorland Armoured Patrol Vehicle ↗ — Gun Mart (accessed 2026-09-09)
• Shorland S55 (Wheeled armoured personnel carrier) ↗ — Army Guide (accessed 2026-09-09)
• Shorland S52 (Reconnaissance Vehicle) ↗ — Army Guide (accessed 2026-09-09)
• Shorland SB401 ↗ — The Shorland Site (Clive Elliott) (accessed 2026-09-09)
• The History of Shorland Armoured Cars ↗ — The Shorland Site (Clive Elliott) (accessed 2026-09-09)
• Shorland APV SB401 Index ↗ — WarWheels.net (accessed 2026-09-09)
• Short Brothers ↗ — Wikipedia (accessed 2026-09-09)
• JXI 7163 - Land Rover Shorland MK 4 - SB401 Armoured Patrol Car ↗ — Flickr (00griff00) (accessed 2026-09-09)
• File:Shoreland MK5 Armoured Patrol Car.jpg ↗ — Wikimedia Commons (accessed 2026-09-09)
• File:PDRM Tactical Landrover007.jpg ↗ — Wikimedia Commons (accessed 2026-09-09)

Catalogue references

• User-supplied Shorland Mk4 photographs, JXI 7163