In the world of motorsport, few vehicles survive from the bygone days of rough-and-tumble, death-defying racing on or off paved surfaces. In this case it’s a real Camel Trophy team truck and it’s listed for sale here on eBay in North Carolina.

From 1980 to 2000, the Camel Trophy series was essentially an overland endurance-type race, meant more for amateurs than licensed professionals.  Courses ran through some of the most unforgiving terrain that Mother Nature had created and through which Mankind had dared to carve paths just wide enough for a motor vehicle.

The first event was a six-person, three-team trek in  rented Jeep CJ6s that covered 1600 kilometers (994 miles) over 12 days, and only two of the Jeeps survived. By the end, it was a worldwide pheonmenon with millions of applicants, hundreds of participants each year, and vast sums of money being spent to equip vehicles and teams with the very best equipment that money could buy.  Films and documentaries of the goings-on are abundant and the seller of this machine has included one of them as provenance to the reality of the truck we see before us. According to Iain Chapman, it was “Neither a race nor a rally, Camel Trophy was first and foremost an adventurous expedition.  It did include an element of competition where participating teams could test their 4×4 driving and mechanical skills, endurance, courage, stamina, perseverance and resilience against the worst that nature could offer.”

The truck presented to us today is allegedly the 1991 team’s communications truck that ran in Tanzania. This author admits to not knowing much about Defenders per se, but from the looks of the truck for sale and comparing them with the images from the actual race, this truck looks to be the real thing and has truly been taken-care-of in the 30-odd years since then. It’s missing a few things like the satellite dish and a couple of spare tires, but overall, it presents acceptably.

One of my dreams in life is to own a piece of motorsports history like this. Not a tire or a broken body panel – a complete, driveable unit. If I had the money or the personal connections to something, you can bet that I’d have something and preserve it for the world to see. Far too often have we seen legendary machines lost to time or the elements or neglect, or the dreaded scrap heap. Save ’em if you can, because they don’t make ’em like they used to.