Land Rover 101 Forward Control

The vehicle was designed to be easily transported by air; the positioning of the 3.5 litre Rover V8 engine beneath and to the rear of the cab eliminates the bonnet at the front, making the vehicle more or less cuboid thus reducing unused space in transport aircraft.

All the vehicles produced at the Land Rover factory at Lode Lane, Solihull were soft top ("rag top") General Service (GS) gun tractors, although later on many were rebuilt with hard-top ambulance bodies and as radio communication trucks.

The British RAF Rapier system used three Land Rovers in deployment: a 24V winch-fitted 101 Firing Unit Tractor (FUT) to tow the launch trailer, loaded with four Rapier missiles, guidance equipment and radio; a 12V winch-fitted 101 Tracking Radar Tractor (TRT) to tow the Blindfire Radar trailer, also loaded with four Rapier missiles and guidance equipment; and a 109 Land Rover to tow a reload trailer with 9 Rapier missiles and loaded with the unit's other supplies and kit.

On 5 September 1979 an open 101FC of the Life Guards Regiment carried the coffin of Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma from his funeral at Westminster Abbey to Waterloo Station By the late 1990s, the 101s were decommissioned by the MoD and were replaced with Defenders and Pinzgauer vehicles.

[citation needed] The Australian Army acquired fifty 101 vehicles, which were used to tow Rapier missile carriers.

Thirty-one 101s were converted by Land Rover with styled bodyshells for the 1995 Sylvester Stallone film Judge Dredd.

Modifications included conversion to a coil spring suspension system based on the Range Rover configuration of the time.

The left-hand drive example (UK registration GDP252V) was reconstructed with a hand-built custom chassis as a completely new vehicle.