Land Rover - Whicker's World.

If you're an SUV person, we have a treat for you today. So, please stop texting your kids about soccer practice and pull over to the side of the road for just a moment. Please enjoy this vintage Land Rover ad on your steering-wheel-mounted iPad while the vehicle is in park. Don't roll your eyes, because you either have an iPad stuck on your steering wheel or have dearly wished for one, you who are interested in everything but driving, all performed during the task of driving. This is for you.

This is what your SUV ancestors were dreaming of in The Sixties. It's a 1964 Land Rover Model 88 with coach lamps, Neiman-Marcus mink lap belts, pink valve caps, a silver Abercrombie & Fitch flask, and ever so much more. Oh, and don't miss the wicker body panels. People wanted to feel they were touring the wilderness from the comfort of their sitting room, perhaps to blow the head off a piece of the wilderness and bring it home to stick it on the wall in a pose that makes it seem as if the piece of wilderness stood a chance in the fight, or even knew the hunter was there.

It reminds me of Jeremy Clarkson's Mercedes cottage modification project car. It had all the comforts of a vacation home, but on the road.

So what's with the "Whicker's World" reference? That was a British documentary show that I only know about because of Monty Python, and here's that. It features Eric Idle, Terry Jones, Mike Palin, Graham Chapman, and John Cleese as Alan Whicker, who apparently was a kind of English Robin Leach of the 1960s. Together, the six Pythons teach us how to do a passable Alan Whicker voice without actually seeing or hearing him. Distilled Whicker.

Please enjoy both of these videos while driving at posted speed limits, for safety's sake.

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