Land Rover Defender Blog

A Guide to Defender Side Graphics & Decals

It's time to increase your Land Rover knowledge to even higher levels of nerdy.

Ben Gribbin

Ben Gribbin

July 7, 2014

Hello, I'm the editor of FunRover. I'm a massive Land Rover fan. Currently own a TD5 90. 2015 MR Blogger of the Year

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FUN ROVER STORAGE

Cheese & Crackers, Salt & Pepper, Land Rovers and side stickers. Combos that just work. Land Rover stopped applying side decals that ran down the length of the body in 1997, when the 300TDI model ceased production (apart from a few choice liveries for special edition vehicles, such as the SVX). Here's our guide to the graphics Land Rover used, perfect if you're restoring a Defender and want to get the correct type - or if you're Land Rover nerds like us and actually enjoy this kind of stuff.

1983 - 1984: Beige Stripes

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These retro beige stripes ran the full length of the vehicle body and featured the word "County" on the rear quarter panel. The typeface used was Copperplate Script.

1984 - 1986: The Kicked Stripes

P1050705

The classic elongated s-shaped graphic, finished with a series of staggered intersects. These graphics would be beige & cream on most models, whilst white & grey models would have the light and dark blue seen here.

1986 - 1988: The Techno Series

85-87

1986 saw the launch of this new, much more complex series of intertwining bands. It's a bit of a 1980's design cliché, but retains some visual cues such as the line breaks seen in the previous decals. White models have the same design, but in green and blue instead, seen below:

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1988-1990: Gradient Banding

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The design becomes much cleaner, with 4 stripes that gradually fade in shades of silver, grouping together until the classy flick upwards near the rear quarter panel. The bottom most band's lettering is negative, allowing the paint colour to show through. On non-county models, the design varied slightly, the lines pointing the opposite direction and the corresponding model's designation is written on the door instead.

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1990 - 1992: The Defender

90-92

The word Defender replaces 'County' except the last band, which still carries the trim level.

90-92basic

A variation for non-county models of the previous non-county graphics - this time, the Defender logo is added to the trailing band, just above the model number.

1992 - 1998: The Last of the Decals

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The final evolution of stickers that Land Rover added to the Defender, phased out with the end of the 300TDI. These graphics are much cleaner, much more simple. They still carry the trim level on the rear wing.

Now go, use this information to dazzle your mates at the pub, bore your spouse or be able to decipher the production year of a Land Rover model on graphics alone.

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5 Comments

  1. Gavin Earnshaw says:

    My ’86 MY Nintey has the later 88-90 stripes with the downward slope ’90’ in them – it must have been tarted up!

  2. B.Kerby says:

    Decals for the older 90/110 are in the same league as rocking horse poops & hens gnashers

  3. Robert says:

    Does anyone know there any companies who produce the 1987 green counity side strips? Thanks

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