Man who bought 240 Land Rover Defenders in 2015 shares insane amount he made from them
In 2015, a man named Charles Fawcett bought more than 200 Land Rover Defenders, and he had big plans for the fleet of cars.
People thought he'd lost his mind, but Fawcett was confident the move would change his life.
10 years later, and Charles' naysayers are probably burying their heads in the sand and wishing they'd have done the same thing, even if it didn't seem like an obvious money-spinner at the time.
The Defenders were among the last of the model to roll off the production line after Land Rover shockingly decided to discontinue the popular range after almost 70 years, though they brought it back a few years later.
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As others said farewell to the iconic car, Charles knew there was something he could make out of the discontinuation.
His big plan? To buy 240 of the cars so he could modify and sell them through his automotive company, Twisted.
The North Yorkshire-based business customises, modifies and 'twists' 100 Defenders every year, and thanks to Charles, their client list became something to envy.
Charles decided to splash out over £8 million on hundreds of discontinued cars, but there was an issue, he didn't even have the money to buy them.
Despite the challenges, he turned out to be onto a winning idea because 10 years later and his fleet of Land Rover Defenders have been selling for hundreds of thousands of pounds.
With these cars sitting in a Thirsk showroom, it turned out that there would be a decent number of buyers after all.
Charles wouldn't spill the beans on the identities of his A-list clients (and there are several), but some of them are the type you'd definitely want to hang out with.
His expensive gamble turned out alright in the end, but pretty much every journey has a few hiccups along the way.
It turns out that trying to buy 240 Land Rovers is a logistically difficult task in and of itself, though he got a deal got over the line and Land Rover agreed to the huge order, which meant Charles had to actually pay up for his ginormous order.
Lacking the cash on hand to buy 240 Land Rovers, which is understandable, the bloke had to set up a line of funding that meant having to build, assemble and sell six cars a month for the first year.
Explaining how he seized on the opportunity, Charles told LADbible he'd just been looking for stock when he heard Land Rover were discontinuing the Defender.
He told LADbible: "Land Rover are very protective of their brand, they didn’t want people taking the product, changing it and making money off it.
"When I placed the order, what I didn’t tell [Land Rover] was that I had no money to pay for them and I didn’t have anywhere to put them.
"So when we finally got them to agree [to the sale], we had to scurry around and find the money. We had to borrow every single penny of that money and we had to pay back every single penny of that money back.
"Everyone thought we were nuts. But, I always felt it was a good investment and I always knew there was a get out if I needed it.
"These vehicles would always sell even if they sold for what they cost me."
It's a big gamble to spend all that money on 240 Land Rovers, since if it goes wrong and the demand isn't there, you're stuck with a couple of hundred cars that cost you a fortune and nobody wants to buy.
Fortunately for Charles his gamble paid off.
"History has proven that an outgoing model in the automotive sector always depreciates quickly. We believed it would appreciate and we needed it to," Charles continued.
"I negotiated a 14.8 percent discount of 240 vehicles that had a retail of around £30,000, so I probably paid £22,600 per vehicle.
"We sold them at the beginning for £70,000-£90,000, but now we’re selling them between £180,00-£320,000.
"The bit that gets missed in the middle is that we also put 1,500 hours into every single build. That's 1,500 hours of labour using parts, components and processes developed over 25 years.
"It really is an extraordinary level of craftsmanship and attention to detail that justifies the premium price point, but it was still a huge risk. Ultimately, we build something no one needs but the desire for it is huge.
"Having that stock of vehicles has enabled the business to grow over the nine year period since production ended and in those nine years we will have turned well over in excess of £50 million. Without those core vehicles I suspect the business would look quite different.
"We are down to the last 25 now, I will be sad to see them go, but I'm going to keep some for myself."
While most people would think it was a bad idea to buy 240 cars at the end of a production line that's grinding to a halt, Charles actually quite likes making decisions which people would reckon would go wrong.
"A number of times through my journey with Twisted I've had people advise me not to do things, or tell me something’s a bad idea," he said.
"I have to be honest, it makes me want to do it more. If someone says 'no' it’s like red rag really, at any of these points in the past I had nothing to lose so why would I not try something?"
He even managed to convert dedicated-Defender-hater Jeremy Clarkson after sending one of his Twisted vehicles for review, along with a letter from his seven-year-old daughter Molly asking the former Top Gear presenter to 'look after my daddy's car'.
Clarkson called the move 'emotional blackmail', but it did manage to work on him as he penned a positive review of the vehicle.
"Molly, all is well. Even though it started out in life as a Land Rover, which I hate as much as I bet you hate some of your teachers, I did like your dad’s car," Clarkson wrote in the Times review back in 2018.
Not satisfied with resting on his laurels, Charles' next goal is to modify one of the remaining Defenders until he can flog it for half a million quid.
If he's going to manage that he admits he'll have to modify the car until it's 'exquisite', though he reckons there's only so much you can do to the vehicles as you need to keep the heart and soul of the Defender.
That means not everything can be perfect, they've got to have the quirks and foibles which would make a Defender owner know exactly what they're driving.
As the man who bought 240 of them puts it, 'sometimes you just want to hear the indicator click, feel the gear change and pull on a notchy hand brake'.
Additional words by Lucy Devine and Joe Harker
Britt Jones