stonefield

[Les Freathy]

Back in the late 1970s a private british company Stonefield produced a 1.5 ton 4x4 with the intentions of winning a lucrative order from the British army. Two other companies Landrover and Volvo submitted vehicles in the same class, following extensive trials the Stonefield failed to gain favour with the ministry and lost out on the contract. They did however gain an order from Malaysia for around 60 units and a number of various civilian varients were produced for example police, fire, and utility services. I had the fortune to be able to test drive a couple of these vehicles when the company were based at Rochester in Kent and found them a good cross country vehicle to handle i obviously never tested the way the army would have done but found some of the comments at the time rather harsh. The first photo shows the very early prototype with rather ungainly cab
Les