My first car was a Land-Rover. Technically it wasn't because I had a VW for about two months before I spotted a Land-Rover 88 station wagon for sale at a dealer in West Virginia. He had one other and I think they were the last two he ever had. That was in 1968.
It was not necessarily the most practical vehicle for me at that point but I used it a great deal off-road, on backroads, on old strip mines and every time it snowed, I went up every steep hill in town.
I even knew two other people, both college students like myself, who owned Land-Rovers, but theirs were both long wheel base models. I think all of them were 1965 model years.
They were easily as capable off-road/rough tracks as anything else around there, as I proved on a few trips with other four-wheelers. That was before the invention of the SUV concept, although there were certainly around in the form of Jeep station wagons, both old and new, Jeepsters (sort of a sporterized Jeep Universal), Land Cruiser station wagons, and already there were Chevy Suburbans. A lot of people who wanted an imported 4x4 thought Land Cruisers better. Personally, I would have enjoyed owned a Dodge Power-Wagon.
My mileage was never very great, only about 14 miles a gallon, no matter what sort of driving I did. No matter. I was happy with it. I ended up wrecking the thing in a downtown traffic accident.