Man who bought 240 Land Rover Defenders to make huge profit had to pull off wild financing deal to make it happen

This man secured himself 240 Land Rover Defenders, planning to make a huge profit, but had to pull off a wild financing deal to make it a reality.

Charles Fawcett, the founder of Twisted Automotive, had been hearing rumors of the Defender being discontinued.

Then the announcement came in October 2014 – the Defender would wrap up production in December 2015.

This left Fawcett with the opportunity to buy some of them before it was too late – but it wouldn’t be an easy process.

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How buying 240 Land Rover Defenders quickly became very complicated

Twisted Automotive is a tuning company that specializes in Land Rover Defenders, modifying each vehicle and selling it as a premium product.

As you can imagine, it’d be a big investment – particularly when 240 are purchased for the tune of more than $10 million.

It was made all the more complicated when Land Rover tried to stop this deal from going through.

Fawcett’s original contract with JLR stated that the Land Rover Defenders would need to be ‘modified’ before he sold them. 

No big deal, right? That was always going to be the plan.

However, after the carmaker had delivered half of Twisted Automotive’s order, things abruptly ground to a halt.

JLR reached out to ask him to define what he meant by ‘modification’.

Fortunately, they managed to smooth things out.

But now he had to place his orders all in one day.

That’s right – 240 Defenders purchased in a single day.

How did this man finance this huge deal?

With no idea of how he was going to store 240 Defenders or even pay for them, Fawcett placed his order.

The first four to five months were funded by a private individual, who loaned him $1.33 million with 10 percent interest.

After that point, he approached a specialist financial institution, which loaned him millions.

It was a huge but calculated risk.

The storage area would have eaten a whole bunch of money too, but Fawcett managed to find a cheaper alternative – a local farmer’s old ammunition store.

In the end, JLR delivered 239 of the 240 ordered Defenders – one was believed to be ‘lost to the system’.

To this day, Fawcett estimated that only 21 or 22 remain in storage.

It was a massively complicated and arduous process, but it sure did pay off in the end.

To see more of his journey for yourself, see his interview over on Resto Revival.

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