Tracking my time spent with a ’69 Land Rover Series 2A Bugeye. Purchased in Highland California in June of 2016.

I recently purchased what I hope to be a ’69 Series IIA “bug-eye” Land Rover. The bug-eye is distinguished by headlights mounted in the fenders (not the grill) but not mounted into a flushed headlight bucket. In Land Rover parlance the headlights are mounted in the “wings” rather than the “breakfast”.

Depending on whom you believe, the bug-eye was produced from mid 1968 to sometime in 1970 or 1971, but officially it was produced from April of 1968 to August of 1969 when the bug-eye was replaced replaced with a model featuring a unitized headlight bucket incorporating a flush mounted headlight and integrated market and turn lamps.  The bug-eye was created to address safety regulations in the US and Northern Europe. The US and European trucks had slightly different marker and turn lamp configurations, but featured similar headlight configurations with the headlight protruding out of the wing and finished with a chrome bezel.

In the US, the 69 was further distinguished by other changes to address specific US regulations resulting in Land Rover offering a single hard top 88″ configuration. The required additions drove up the cost of the offered 88″  model to which Land Rover responded by introducing cost saving features. The easiest to spot change was the elimination of 4 inward facing jumps seats in the rear, replacing them with 2 folding benches.