At 82, this intrepid Land Rover owner just won’t quit

Dorothea Smedley always reverses onto her driveway. That way, her Land Rover Defender is always ready to go. The Yorkshirewoman leaves little to chance—“if anything wants doing, it gets done, and it gets done right”—and she has a steely commitment to keeping her vehicle on the road. A “diesel tank more than half full” kind of woman, she and the truck can be relied upon to turn up—and tow you out of a muddy field.

Prepared for a middle-of-the-night emergency, although she’d prefer an invitation for adventure, Dorothea has a vivacity that belies her tiny stature. Driving in two-inch kitten-heeled shoes, she says, helps. Fiercely independent, a trait shared with her turbo-boosted “Landy,” she is as inspiring as she is impressive when sat behind its wheel. At 82, she’s the woman I want to be when I grow up.

“Get yourself sorted,” Dorothea instructs, as we approach her Defender, painted in Zambezi Silver. It’s a purchase she made in the aftermath of a loss that almost destroyed her go-getting attitude: “You can only be the strong one for so long and then eventually you just don’t have it to do anymore.”

I notice the Defender bears a chivvying phrase: 1 life, live it. “The man that made that, made it wrong,” she proclaims. “It should be one life, live it. Now come on,” she says. It’s time to go out for a drive.

Save for Radley, Dorothea’s sturdy Scottish Terrier, road-tripping with a passenger is a rarity, she says: “Nobody else might ride in this Land Rover again this year.” Accustomed to traveling alone since her husband Kenneth died in 2002, hers is a bittersweet freedom.

“I think of him every day and I would give everything I have, and more besides, if I could have him back for a day,” says Dorothea. “But, it ain’t gonna happen. I’ve done 21 year now on my own so that’s the way it’ll stay.”

I hesitate: “If you could have him back for a day …” I pause, leaving the question half finished and hanging in the air. “… Where would you go?” Laughing softly, Dorothea graciously replies: “I don’t know.” She says it twice more before deciding upon Filey, a place in North Yorkshire where their family spent many a happy holiday.

Dorothea is eager to move on from sentimentality. With a bit of pressure on the Land Rover’s accelerator, we take off into the hills, the truck’s tuned diesel engine rumbling. “It’s all right, is my Defender.”

No ordinary production vehicle, Dorothea’s 2003 Defender TD5 90 is an early customization by Twisted Automotive, whose mission is to re-engineer Defenders to extraordinary standards.

The car’s makeover, completed 13 years ago, included an upgrade to the 2.5-liter engine’s ECU, a change which, according to Dorothea, means “it sounds like it should do—throaty.” Twisted’s modifications extended to the installation of a high-performance air filter and stainless-steel exhaust system, uprated suspension and antiroll bar, and more boost for the turbocharger.Chunky, 18-inch Hurricane alloy wheels are a flashy finishing touch.

Dorothea’s one criticism? The upgrades are a little too electronics-dependent. “Heated windscreen, electric windows, air-conditioning, it’s got everything that can and will go wrong. That’s why I spend the money on having it serviced.” There is, however, a newer feature that gets her particular approval—the recently recommissioned heated seats. The warmth helps relieve the arthritic pain in Dorothea’s spine.

A charmed example of her derring-do, the first time Dorothea “had a do” at driving was at the helm of her father’s 1935 Riley on Southport Sands. An expansive and quiet stretch of England’s North West coast, the area was ideal, I assume, for letting loose a twelve-year-old in a pre-WWII vehicle. “My dad always encouraged me,” says Dorothea, who was unfazed by her introduction to the workings of a pre-selector gearbox.

At 19, she met Kenneth and, at 21, he became her husband. At 24, now a young mother, Dorothea took and passed her driving test. “There wasn’t many women [with a license] but [Kenneth] never believed a woman couldn’t do it.” It’s tempting to romanticize this as an empowering turning point, but Dorothea is more matter of fact. The license, she clarifies, made daily norms—the school run and shopping—much easier. It also made “the pleasure” of going to the seaside a more frequent treat.

Dorothea’s maiden drive in a Land Rover came thanks to Kenneth, a mechanic, when he equipped her with a Series 2a in the late ’60s. As a “work horse,” its purpose was to traverse the bumpy two-mile track that led to the farm where they lived. As a mode of transport, however, it marked the start of Dorothea’s love affair with one of Britain’s most iconic marques.

“We’ve had the lot, you name it, we’ve had it,” says the octogenarian as she finds fifth gear. A smile flashes across her face as she puts her Landy through its paces.

“If I get at the back of a wagon on’t motorway, I’ve got the power to pass. I’ve got all the confidence in the world with it.” By all accounts, it’s an unshakable union between woman and machine, but it’s one that began in turmoil.

Three weeks after Kenneth gave Dorothea the keys to their original Defender, he passed away. The couple had been married for 39 years and one month to the day, sharing two children (Karen and Phillip) and a passion for caravanning, or RV camping. “My husband got a bee in his bonnet about getting a [Defender] 90 and he found one that was the bees knees,” says Dorothea. “It was a lovely dark green one with 9000 miles on the clock. He said it would be the last one I ever had.”

Six years after Kenneth was gone, so too—suddenly—were the keys to the Defender. “Thieves went in my caravan, which I hadn’t locked, and tipped every cupboard up until they found my Land Rover keys—leaving them in there was the biggest mistake I ever made—but what annoyed me more than anything was they kicked the little Scottie dog that I had at the time.”

A model that’s much desired by criminals, the Defender was stolen at a caravan site near Blyth Services on the A1 highway in October, 2010. Dorothea suspects the Land Rover was spotted and subsequently targeted when she stopped to refuel. Last seen “going like hell” on the motorway by the driver who came to recover Dorothea’s caravan the next day, the Defender, sadly, disappeared.

“I must admit, I cried, and cried, and cried. I used to keep Ken’s disabled badge behind the sun visor so every time I pulled it down, his photograph were there. When they pinched my Landy, they pinched me picture.” The tale renders me speechless, but Dorothea has something to say to the thieves: “I hope it didn’t bring you any luck.”

Ready for a rejuvenating brew and some light refreshments—Dorothea takes her bacon on brown bread with no sauce but lashings of butter—we make a pitstop at Twisted’s headquarters in Thirsk. It’s a homecoming for her silver Land Rover, but the visit also reveals a special relationship between her and the team.

“When she [Dorothea] called me to say someone had taken her 90, it struck a chord,” recalls Charles Fawcett, the company’s founder. Supplying a replacement was a strange mix of doing business as well as lessening the devastation of Dorothea’s loss. “Clearly she was quite upset, but she had a stiff upper lip and got on with it.”

“I were full of cold, but I wanted a motor,” Dorothea says. Arriving for a test drive at quarter to five on a snowy winter’s night, she found a familiarity in the diesel-powered truck. Slightly more spritely than the one Kenneth had bought her, she sought a second opinion from her son, who agreed it was a “yes.” She parted with £14,995 to make it hers—the first Defender she has ever bought. Today, the starting price for an equivalent vehicle has nearly doubled.

“Thing is, you need to buy one from someone that’s right,” she says. “I got mine with 55,000 miles on the clock and I’ve done well over 131,000 now with no real faults. I wouldn’t have kept it this long, would I, if I weren’t happy with it.”

Fitted with a tracker, immobilizer, and steps on the side and rear to make it easier for Dorothea and four-legged Radley to climb in and out, Dorothea’s Defender, by Charles’s summation, “has become her life partner.” Perfectly imperfect, the truck’s windscreen has sprung a new leak, but it’s something that doesn’t bother her; she know it’s a straightforward fix.

“She has an appreciation of the mechanics and a sympathy for how a Land Rover is put together. She sees its flaws but lets the charm and practicality rule her appreciation of the vehicle,” says Fawcett.

Responsible for rescuing over forty stranded cars from a waterlogged field in a single day, Dorothea is used to getting others out of a pickle. She thrives, however, on being self-sufficient. “People say to me, ‘Why do you drive round in a mini wagon?’ I say, because it gets me on a mucky field and it’ll get me off a mucky field.”

Its road presence and ability to pull her RV also accounts for a lot. “I’ve always said if I ever have a bump, let me have one in a big motor with a bit of clout. This one does the job.”

During our farewell exchange, I tell Dorothea to go steady. “It’s like they say, better two minutes late in this world, than a minute too soon in the next,” is her ever-pragmatic response.

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