First registered 24th April 1958, SXF 455 started life with the Ministry of Supply at Desborough airfield in Northamptonshire. As yet I have not been able to find out anything of its service history, other than it was a reconnaissance vehicle. This was suspected from some of the characteristic holes in the body panels and confirmed when some of the original livery was discovered under the numerous coats of paint that were stripped off during restoration. It would originally have been part of a reserve fleet, with other vehicles such as the �Green Goddess� fire engines, for use in the event of nuclear attack or national emergency.
After the Civil Defence was disbanded in 1968, the vehicle ended up with Haringey Council and was used as their fleet support tender.
Around 1973 it was sold at auction and subsequently put to use as a breakdown truck.
In 1975 It was bought by Tommy Robinson, of Nightingale riding stables of Chingford, he used it for around 10 years as a tow vehicle and general run around. Then after serious mechanical failure, it was laid up in the corner of his yard.
In 1992 Martin Wedgwood of South Woodford persuaded Tommy Robinson to sell and intended breaking it up for spares. I rescued it in 1994 when his wife decided she no longer wanted it as an ornament in her front garden. I initially declined to make an offer on it due to its derelict condition, but eventually agreed to take it in exchange for some work I did for Martin.
As a project it didn�t have much going for it, every panel was damaged, the engine was seized, the gearbox was broken and the chassis and bulkhead were rusted way beyond the point where most people would have considered them scrap. Serious restoration started in 1995 and the vehicle was returned to the road in time for the 1999 Billing Land Rover Show, although minus its hard top and livery. My wife, Jeanette, drove it the 75 miles to billing with no roof!
Originally I had planned to have the lettering re-painted, but was persuaded by the company that printed the door crests to use vinyl lettering as per my drawings, this turned out to be excellent and most people think that it is paint!
Re-producing the door crest was quite a challenge. The only examples of this I had seen were on Steve Myers Field Cable Party SXF 582, he had found these, almost in tact, under the paint and had carefully touched up some of the detail. I took a number of close up pictures of these and scanned them planning to retouch the images. Although a good idea in theory when I looked closely, I was never going to be happy with them.
I ended up starting from scratch, re-drawing anything that was practical and copying and pasting fine details from the various scanned images, and painstakingly building up the whole crest. It only took about 6 weeks! I then had them printed up by a signs and graphics company, they normally print things like van livery and taxi adverts, not cheap but the end result was well worth it.
A sensible person would never have taken this on as a restoration, having done it though I am very pleased with the result and proud to be able to say its all my own work. I would very much like to complete it by replicating the original radio gear and equipment it carried, so if anyone has any information regarding this I would be very grateful.