The record
By the late 1970s the Australian Army's fleet of Series 2A and Series 3 Land Rovers was due for replacement, and the Army launched Project Perentie — named after Australia's largest goanna, Varanus giganteus — to select a new family of 1-tonne 4×4 and 2-tonne 6×6 light trucks. Trials commenced in 1981 and formal tenders were called in June 1982; from seven bidders, the Land Rover/Isuzu 110-based contenders were evaluated against the Jeep AM10, the Mercedes-Benz 300GD and the Unimog, with the Toyota Land Cruiser assessed two years later. (The contemporaneous Project Waler was a separate, cancelled program to replace the Army's M113 armoured personnel carriers, not part of the light-vehicle buy.)
The winning tender came from JRA Limited (Jaguar Rover Australia), the Australian licensee and assembler of Land Rover products, whose Perentie team was led by George Fowler at Moorebank, New South Wales. The vehicle was far more than a locally assembled 110: the strengthened chassis was hot-dip galvanised and stressed to survive being lifted by helicopter from a single corner, the axles, gearbox and suspension were uprated, and the British drivetrain gave way to Isuzu's 3.9-litre 4BD1 four-cylinder diesel. For the 2-tonne 6×6, JRA turbocharged the engine (4BD1-T) and engineered a twin rear-axle chassis unique to the Australian contract. The contract's Australian-content requirements kept manufacture and assembly at Moorebank, which Rover Australia operated until the plant closed on 30 September 1992 at the end of the build.
The original order covered 2,500 4×4 (1-tonne) and 400 6×6 (2-tonne) vehicles, with 4×4 deliveries beginning in August 1987 and 6×6 deliveries in March 1989; further contracts in the 1990s, associated with Project Bushranger's interim phase, took the 6×6 total to 699. The 6×6 family comprised cargo trucks (215, plus 32 with winches), four-litter FFR ambulances (94), general maintenance workshop trucks (181), electronic repair (40) and comsec repair (12) vehicles, air defence trucks for RBS-70 detachments (72), crew cabs (26) and 27 Long Range Patrol Vehicles (LRPV) — the heavily armed deep-reconnaissance mounts of the Special Air Service Regiment.
Perenties left the line from 1987 in the Australian Army's post-1967 lustreless olive drab, but early in the production run factory painting switched to the three-colour disruptive-pattern scheme ('Auscam') of camouflage tan and matt black patches over the olive drab base; it had become the official fleet scheme by the time the SASR's 6×6 LRPVs were delivered and was extended across the whole green fleet through the 1990s. Vehicles deployed on United Nations service were repainted overall white, and the SASR's patrol vehicles later wore two-colour desert schemes in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The 6×6 proved exceptionally capable, deploying to Somalia, Timor-Leste, the Solomon Islands, Iraq and Afghanistan — where SASR LRPVs operated deep inside hostile territory. Lacking protection against land mines and improvised explosive devices, the fleet was progressively replaced by Mercedes-Benz G-Wagons (including 6×6 variants) under Project Land 121, with large-scale disposals from about 2013. Surviving LRPVs are preserved at the Australian War Memorial and the Army Museum Bandiana, and surplus 6×6s are prized by collectors and expedition builders.
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