Twisted are one of Britain’s foremost company’s specializing in the improvement of the Land Rover Defender. The Twisted treatment is done with great attention to quality and it has been that quality control that has given the company such a solid reputation.
Fast Facts
- Twisted are a company that specializes in customizing and improving the classic Land Rover Defender.
- Twisted also nowadays do the same sort of work on the Suzuki Jimny.
- A 2015 Land Rover Defender 110 XS Station Wagon that has been given the Twisted treatment is coming up for sale by RM Sotheby’s. It is powered by a 6.2-litre, 430 brake horsepower GM LS3 V8 engine.
The Land Rover was without doubt one of Britain’s most recognizable cultural icons. Created back in the years after the Second World War ended in 1945 this “ugly duckling” of a car made its debut at the Amsterdam Motor Show in 1948.
Rover had not initially emerged from the ashes of the war imagining that they were going to build a pioneering vehicle: they were a luxury car maker and their vision of the future was to go right on building nice luxury cars for professionals and business people.
But this was not to be and Rover was essentially pushed into creating an agricultural vehicle for the post-war season that required the re-building of Europe and Britain.
This new agricultural Rover was created by Rover’s head of design Maurice Wilks and it was essentially a British improved Jeep.
You can find a more detailed history if you click here.
You can also find Ben Fogle’s book “Land Rover: The Story of the Car that Conquered the World” if you click here.
What started out as a utilitarian “ugly duckling” went on to quite literally conquer the world. Even as the British Empire was coming to an end adventurous people discovered that this new Land Rover was a near perfect expedition vehicle and they started taking their Land Rovers into all sorts of places where cars should not go.
All over the world, there were a lot of isolated people groups for whom a Land Rover was the first car they ever saw.
Of course the original Land Rover did not stay the same over the decades in which it was in production. Over time the original Series Land Rovers with their anemic engines and “horse and cart” live axles with leaf springs front and rear gave way to the much improved Land Rover Defender with its coil springs, much better wheels and tires, and much improved engines and transmissions. The Land Rover Defender even gained the option of the rather wonderful Rover alloy V8 engine.
The killjoys like to tell us that “All good things must come to an end” and it appears the folks at Land Rover were believers in that motto and so they decided to end Land Rover Defender production in 2016 and to replace it with a new car. This was not an event that was greeted with boundless enthusiasm by the Land Rover faithful who were rather hoping that the Defender was going to remain in production for eternity as a bastion of practicality and coolness.
But all was not lost, among those who could see that the Defender was a vehicle that could be improved on and that would continue to sell was a man named Charlie Fawcett, who started out as a Defender enthusiast and who started a Land Rover Defender improvement business called “Twisted”.
Why “Twisted” you may ask? I don’t know the answer – perhaps he had been a fan of the British comedy show “The Goon Show” which periodically featured the line “You silly twisted boy“. Or it may have been in reference to what overly enthusiastic driving tends to do to a Land Rover Defender chassis.
Charlie’s business prospered to the extent that, when Land Rover announced that “the end is nigh” for the Defender, Charlie ordered two hundred and forty of them, that was in 2015.
The ideas for Charlie’s Twisted creations primarily came from his customers who would ask him for improvements to their Defenders. Customers who were Defender aficionados were generally people who had great familiarity with their cars and who could see where tweaks and mods could really benefit the vehicle.
All that being said Charlie Fawcett understood that his company reputation needed to be focused on quality: any vehicle that was going to wear the Twisted name needed to be something of high quality, there was to be no “bling” nor creation of tarted up rolling juke-box abominations.
With design and engineering at the forefront of Twisted’s thinking their re-imagined Defenders became highly desirable and the business prospered as a result. Twisted Defenders exude a “best of British” tastefulness.
You can find out more at the Twisted website if you click here.
A beautiful example of a Defender that has been given the Twisted treatment is coming up for sale by RM Sotheby’s at their Cliveden House sale to be held on June 12, 2024.
The Twisted Defender for sale is a 2015 Land Rover Defender 110 XS Station Wagon which has been transformed into something tastefully exciting.
It is equipped with:-
- A 6.2-litre, 430 brake horsepower GM LS3 V8 engine
- Front mounted winch
- Towbar
- LED spotlights
- Alpine iLX-702D stereo with Apple Car Play and Android Auto
- Twisted cabin sound-proofing (a process that consumes a full ninety hours of the three hundred hours required for the re-build
You can find the sale page for this Twisted Land Rover Defender if you click here.
Picture Credits: All pictures courtesy Jonathan Jacob @ RM Sotheby’s
Jon Branch is the founder and senior editor of Revivaler and has written a significant number of articles for various publications including official Buying Guides for eBay, classic car articles for Hagerty, magazine articles for both the Australian Shooters Journal and the Australian Shooter, and he’s a long time contributor to Silodrome.
Jon has done radio, television, magazine and newspaper interviews on various issues, and has traveled extensively, having lived in Britain, Australia, China and Hong Kong. His travels have taken him to Indonesia, Israel, Italy, Japan and a number of other countries. He has studied the Japanese sword arts and has a long history of involvement in the shooting sports, which has included authoring submissions to government on various firearms related issues and assisting in the design and establishment of shooting ranges.
