Air-defence configuration of the Hotspur/SMC Sandringham 6 6×6 Stage One V8, carrying a twin 20 mm Rheinmetall Rh 202 anti-aircraft mount on the load bed; documented only from period Sandringham 6 promotional material and believed to have remained an exhibition demonstrator.
BASE VEHICLESeries III 109″CONVERTERHotspur Armoured Products, Sandringham Motor Company (SMC Engineering)IN SERVICE1980sPRODUCTIONbelieved prototype/demonstrator onlyLAYOUT6 wheels
The record
Among the military bodies offered on the Sandringham 6 — the Land Rover-approved 6×6 conversion of the Series III Stage One V8 engineered by SMC Engineering (Bristol) and marketed with Hotspur — period brochure material shows an air-defence carrier mounting twin Rheinmetall Rh 202 20 mm autocannon, each fed from 270-round magazines, on the rear platform. The two-ton-payload 6×6 chassis, in 125-inch (S6) or 139-inch (S6E) wheelbase, gave the light AA system a mobile mount while retaining over 90 per cent standard Land Rover parts.
The Sandringham 6 was first shown at the 1980 British Army Equipment Exhibition at Aldershot and entered production in 1982, and the AA configuration is believed to have appeared as a demonstration of the chassis' versatility in that period. No customer for the anti-aircraft variant is documented, and with the entire Sandringham 6 run put at around a dozen vehicles it almost certainly remained a brochure offering and exhibition prototype. Documentation is thin — chiefly scanned promotional photographs — so details of this variant should be treated with caution.
Research status: draft — identification, dates or figures could not all be pinned down; the summary says what is unresolved.
Specification
MANUFACTURERLand Rover (donor Series III Stage One V8)
MANUFACTUREDoffered early 1980s; believed exhibition prototype only
ENGINE3.5 L Rover V8 petrol (Stage One)
PRODUCTION RUNbelieved prototype/demonstrator only
COUNTRY OF ORIGINUnited Kingdom
STATUSunknown
RECORD KINDNamed model
MODEL LINESeries III
WHEELS6
CATEGORYMilitary · Other
Catalogue fields describe the vehicle's structure and body as this registry records it. They are not certified factory measurements, and no performance figures are published here.
Imagery
No published image yetA rendering impression or a free-licence photograph will appear here once one is published