Chelsea Truck Company: The car firm made in Chelsea

“These cars are built to last. We don’t just buy bits off the shelf and stick them on. Everything we do is properly designed and engineered. We buy cars in bulk directly from the manufacturers and totally rebuild them. To start a new project, we strip down the donor car and scan it, taking all the digital information we need from the body. From there, we do design sketches and work on early ideas. We also look at the crash structure and see what we can do to enhance it. If somebody had an accident, God forbid, we could say to the insurance company that our cars are actually a lot stronger.”

Powertrains are typically left well alone to keep the manufacturer warranty in tact, but interiors and bodywork are completely overhauled. Think quilted leather roof linings, riveted-on wheel-arch extensions and chunky off-road tyres. The aesthetic won’t be to all tastes, but those who like it really like it.

In fact, Chelsea Truck Company cars are so in demand that they hold their value spectacularly well. “Most of our recent clients have actually been investors,” says Kahn. “The Jeep Wrangler Black Hawk that we have in our showroom right now is up for £60,000. We originally sold that car two years ago for £50,000. It’s done 7000 miles since then, but it’s gone up in value.

“The Wrangler was a total failure in the UK. Nobody wanted it. In 2011, I gave Jeep my first order for 50 cars and we took the Wrangler from zero to hero. Now, one in five Wranglers sold in the UK is one of ours. I turned it into something that is totally iconic.”

Kahn may have history with the Wrangler, but he has a deep running passion for the Land Rover Defender. He has some fairly strident views on how Land Rover should replace its most famous product, a car that, to his mind, is one of the finest automotive designs of all time. “It’s such an iconic shape,” he says. “It’s so beautiful.”

Don’t mistake Kahn’s enthusiasm for the Defender for a compulsion to describe everything he encounters in the most effusive terms. In fact, he is as outspoken a critic of the automotive industry as you’ll come across. The state of car design today is a favourite topic of his.

“The Chelsea Truck Company is proud to be British,” he says. “This country has had some good car designers, but that’s all they have ever been. They’ve never had a backbone, never had a manufacturing facility of their own. Take the designers at Land Rover: they’ve not gone out there and done it on their own. What sort of a designer is that? Their hands are tied and they are restricted.

“That’s what has been missing in this country. Look at Italy: it’s got Zagato, Pininfarina, Giugiaro. I pulled out of the retail sector, where I was selling other people’s cars, and went on the journey of designing my own product range and creating a brand.

“I like some Land Rover stuff, but the Velar is very badly designed in my opinion. It looks beautiful in pictures, but when you actually see the car... what happened to the back end?”

Car design, more than any other topic, gets Kahn fired up. “I’ve got my fingers in every part of the business,” he says, “but design is my favourite bit. If somebody wanted to buy my business tomorrow, I’d sell, but I’d stay on board as chief designer.”

What’s the Chelsea truck company’s flying huntsman 6X6 really like? 

The 6x6’s third axle adds 880mm to the car’s overall length, which makes it somewhat tricky to manoeuvre around town. Don’t be fooled by its knobbly off-road tyres: you’ll rarely see a 6x6 away from the confines of a city, the exact environment where it is most compromised. Welcome to the world of boutique-modified off-road vehicles.

The Chelsea Truck Company’s six-wheeled Defender starts from £149,995 (not all of its products sit at the affordable end of the spectrum, it seems) and the conversion process takes up to eight months. That rearmost axle should be engaged in only very slippery conditions and at speeds below 40mph, which means that during our test drive across a sunny west London, the car was powering a mere four wheels.

Just about every surface in the cabin is trimmed in bright red leather, soft to the touch but hard wearing.

The quilted rooflining, plush bucket seats and leather-trimmed dashboard make the Defender feel less like a utilitarian vehicle and more like a luxury car. Despite that enormous wheelbase, there is precious little room in the rear of the cabin, although you could fling all manner of detritus into the pick-up load bay.

Powered by the standard-issue 2.2-litre diesel engine, the 6x6 is not exactly a potent machine. In fact, you have to use full throttle in first gear just to get it rolling along. The optional 6.2-litre petrol V8 would surely put that right.

The steering is vague and slow and the car thumps and crashes over the royal borough’s potholes and sunken drain covers. Fairly standard Defender stuff, then. It may not drive with much finesse, but there is no questioning the 6x6’s road presence. In the land of the supercar, this unusual machine turns heads like nothing else.

Kahn on how to replace the Defender: 

Having ceased Defender production two years ago, Land Rover faces the unenviable task of replacing it with a new model. (We’re expecting it to go on sale next year.) As a diehard Defender fan, Afzal Kahn reckons he knows what Land Rover should do. Or rather, what it should have done.

“The company is owned by Indians now,” he says. “There were homologation and crash regulations here in the UK that killed the Defender. I would have moved production to India and continued its life. There is no way Land Rover will bring out a car that’s as good looking “Perhaps they should look at what Mercedes has done with the new G-Class. They’ve just built a replica of the old car. The new G-Class looks exactly like the old one — and look at the hype around it.”

Read more