ECR's Rockland, Maine facility on-line tour:
I have always had a deep desire for interesting vehicles. Even before I had a driver's license I was messing with and working on vehicles. These "motorized works of art", as I call them, have been my passion from my earliest memories. I believe my starting a vehicle based business was carved into my thinking back in the 1960s when I would fall asleep in back seat of my dad's car clutching a Matchbox toy truck in each hand. My father shares some of the blame too, as he had a serious car fetish when I was young. He was always pulling in with some cool ride and then trading it and bringing home another one about 6 months later. Over the years I became a self taught mechanic (ask my mother how many times she saw my BMX bike in bits in the basement), because if I wanted a nice car, no one was going to buy it for me, that meant I had to build them, paint them and keep them going. Many years, numerous projects and dozens of cars later I was just out of college and it was time to get a real job, so I worked all over the world on motor yachts in capacities from engineer to Captain. After living at sea for a time I then headed a yacht restoration company that restored vintage motor yachts, taking 100 foot vintage yachts and restoring them from the hull up to better than their former glory. The motor yacht industry was very rewarding, but after a while it was time to settle down. I left the yacht business and started small, importing a few trucks from the UK and fixing them up on this end to sell. Then folks found out I sold them and wanted me to fix them. Then they found out I fixed them and wanted them modified. Then they found out I modified them and wanted them restored, and the result is what you see on this web site. In 1993 I started East Coast Rover Co. in ernest back in my home state of Maine in order to utilize a crew with that New England boat builder spirit that puts outstanding quality and attention to detail first. Flash forward through hundreds of projects and 20 or so years and you'll find us here in our facilities in mid-coast Maine. Our main shop, shown below is located in Rockland in the Rockland Industrial Park. The majority of our work takes place in Rockland. However, we also retain a second facility in Thomaston to house large parts and for storage. It has taken a lot of time to get here but I invite you to tour our Rockland facility yet via this web site.
Enjoy and thanks for your help in getting us here,
Mike Smith
Owner and founder of ECR
One great thing that comes with over a decades experience in dealing with nothing but Land Rovers is that we know exactly what we need and we stock it! No matter if you want a new turbo diesel engine in your Defender 110 or to convert your 5 speed Defender 90 to automatic, we stock everything needed for us to do that here at ECR.
Turbo diesels, 4.6 V8 engines and even Euro specification parts for old or new Defenders are all on the shelf at ECR. Along with the large mechanical parts we also have the large structural parts on hand, like new galvanized frames, ready for your truck. You name it, we have it here ready for your ECR built project. No extra shipping costs or waiting forever for your frame to arrive, like at that smaller shop that has to order all your parts.
If your Defender needs a minor repair we stock those items as well in our huge new inventory area with row after row of new Genuine Land Rover Parts. The new parts area here in Rockland is about the same square footage as the mechanical work space used to be in our old shop. If your Rover needs it, from brake pads to rare parts for your NAS 110's air conditioning system, we stock it. That means your project will not be stalled while a mechanic awaits parts or goes looking for something, and that saves us time and saving time saves you money and keeps your project rolling along like it should.
Perhaps you need upgrades for your ECR project? We stock everything from ARB lockers to Hella lights, new ring and pinions, under-drives, air conditioning systems, Safety Devices cages and more. You name it, we likely have it on hand ready to be installed onto your Defender by our expert staff.
If it is body work that your Rover needs we have that covered as well. We stock every panel for all types of Defenders from roofs to new doors, bulkheads to headliners and much more.
If your project does include some of those new body panels we can get them looking great in our new state of the art paint department that is on site here at ECR. We do not farm out our paint work to some local body shop. To meet our exacting standards everything is done in house at ECR.
Our new paint department has everything your Defender project needs from a clean dust free environment to special jigs and tooling that we have developed over the past years in order to make sure everything on your Rover looks perfect and is correctly lined up.
To assure the perfect paint job we have a new paint booth that is fully computer controlled and dust free. The new booth can also bake painted parts at over 160 degrees to ensure the best paint work is now done in less time.
In keeping with making the new shop as "green" as possible we have also invested in a new state of the art spray gun cleaning system. This system eliminates our use of hazardous chemicals and means that we no longer need any lacquer thinner in the building, thereby reducing our waste materials making the paint department more environmentally friendly.
Once the paint work is done on your Rover we can restore or rebuild your vehicle in one of our dedicated build up areas. These areas keep everything clean and organized, and clean and organized means a faster project and a faster project means less of your money spent vs. a small cluttered shop with parts all over the place.
The size of the new shop allows for many large scale projects to be going on at the same time. There is no need to only work on one or two trucks. Our dedicated Land Rover team keeps up to ten projects on the go in various states of progress on any given day. It doesn't matter if it is a frame up refurbishment like this Series III 88 or...
a complete sorting out of a NAS 110. The size of the shop now allows us to keep projects rolling.
If you need a custom roof rack or want a new bumper we make all those items in house as well. Our fabrication department, still growing with more tools arriving monthly, can make anything you can dream up, and we have already created a lot of dream Defenders from this shop, from our Beach Runner 110s to even an upcoming 130 World Trek expedition vehicle.
You may have a Defender that doesn't need restoration, but does need some repairs or maintenance, we can handle that with ease. We stock all the parts an can handle everything from a new stainless steel exhaust to a new transfer case. No matter what you need for your Defender we can handle it.
Although we do service work and small projects for dozens of clients a year or real focus is large scale restorations like the one you see here nearly completed on this 1993 NAS 110. A few more finishing touches here in our wiring and detail area and this 4.6 EFI V8 automatic NAS 110 will be ready to be transported to the customer for years of faithful service.
As your project gets finished up you may decide to have a new upgraded soft top installed, or custom seat covers made in a color to match your interior. We do all that in house in our dedicated soft trim area of the shop. All our soft tops, seat covers and custom soft trim items are now done here at ECR. This assures top quality, no delays while outside sources are waited on, and any sort of custom item is not an issue. It doesn't matter if it is a simple repair of a broken strap on your existing soft top or if we need a full custom soft top for a Beach Runner 130, our in house soft trim division can handle any task, large or small.
We can help with any Defender request, from something as simple as an oil change to something as complex as a complete restoration.
If you have Land Rover Defender needs there is no other source that covers your needs so well, and no one that knows NAS Defenders better than ECR. Our dedicated staff and top notch facilities are ready to help make all your Defender dreams come true. Our only limitation is your imagination.
Directions to the shop and Local Information here
