St John Ambulance One Ten B183 LBJ

History

St John Ambulance ran four-wheel-drive Land Rover ambulances alongside its road fleet for event cover and casualty recovery from rough ground, where a conventional ambulance could not reach a patient. B183 LBJ is a Land Rover One Ten, the coil-sprung 110-inch model introduced in 1983 that was renamed Defender 110 in 1990, carrying a coachbuilt box-body ambulance conversion: a body wider and taller than the cab with a Luton peak over the cab roof for the AMBULANCE sign, a single top-hinged window in each side, and twin rear doors. The vehicle is preserved and shown at rallies in St John livery — white with green and yellow battenburg along the waist, green AMBULANCE lettering on the sides, a lightbar on the body roof and chevrons on the rear doors — and was photographed for UK Emergency Vehicles' classic ambulance gallery. Its converter and service history are not stated in the source.

The registry's model keeps the Defender 110 cab and front and replaces the hard top with the square body, peak, sign, window, livery and lightbar taken from the photograph; the body's dimensions follow the picture rather than a builder's drawing.

Imagery

Registry record

Manufacturer

Land Rover (One Ten chassis-cab); coachbuilt ambulance body by an unrecorded converter

Manufactured

B-registration (1984-85) One Ten

Modifier / coachbuilder

Unrecorded ambulance coachbuilder

Engine type

Land Rover 2.5 L four-cylinder petrol or diesel (One Ten of the period; not stated in the source)

Production run

One preserved vehicle; the number of St John One Ten box-body ambulances is not stated in the source

Country of origin

United Kingdom

Operated in

United Kingdom

Status

preserved

Catalogue data

Record kind

Named model

Model line

Defender

Wheels

4

Nominal wheelbase

110″

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

• UK Emergency Vehicles — classic ambulances gallery (St John Ambulance Land Rover One Ten ambulance B183 LBJ) ↗ — ukemergency.co.uk (accessed 2026-09-11)

Catalogue references

• https://www.ukemergency.co.uk/category/ambulance/ambulance-classic/ https://www.ukemergency.co.uk/category/ambulance/ambulance-classic/ ↗

Development reference notes

• MMB Defender 130 St John ambulance · HERITAGE-FLEET-REFERENCES.md

  Tall square medical body; side patient access; ambulance lighting and markings. Reference: https://www.lrheritagecollection.org.uk/the-collection/vehicles/svc-01