It is difficult to think of a time when the Range Rover was not a byword for formidable, class-leading offroad capability.

In particular, the Range Rover Classic with its tremendously long-lived Rover V8 engine became a perfect pairing, with the former’s design showcasing the absolute limits of what the latter could do.

Whilst initially a Buick engine, the Rover V8 was first used for the company’s luxury saloons. However, it found its true calling as the beating heart of one of the most astonishing and groundbreaking offroad vehicles there has ever been.

In 1970, however, this had not been completely proven, even if it was already popular on the road. It needed a big test, one which pitted it against a mix of different terrains where roads of any kind were not guaranteed.

The best person to lead this test, naturally, was Ginger Baker, the superstar drummer from the band Cream.

He had planned to set up a recording studio in what was then the Nigerian capital of Lagos alongside Afrobeat pioneer Fela Kuti. As part of this, he recruited filmmaker Tony Palmer as well as the talents of the then-new Range Rover, fittingly painted in Bahama Gold, to create Ginger Baker in Africa.

Following a prolific but exceptionally volatile creative period in the 1960s, Mr Baker had vanished from the British music scene, but whilst people feared he would never come back, what he had done was travel from Algeria through Niger and into Nigeria, through parts of the Sahara desert.

It was an exceptionally strange journey, with many challenges and even an arrest for failing to report a stay in the Sahara, but the Range Rover proved itself to be an exceptionally reliable steed for what became something of a spiritual journey for the infamously troubled drummer.

Whilst the greatest competitive achievement for the Range Rover would be the initial Paris-Dakar Rally at the end of the decade, Ginger Baker’s journey proved to be just as important and influential.