The record
The Guarda Nacional Republicana was founded in 1911 as Portugal's national gendarmerie: a military force under military law, headquartered at the Quartel do Carmo in Lisbon, that carries out preventive policing and highway patrol across some 94 per cent of the national territory — the countryside, small towns, borders and coast that the civilian Polícia de Segurança Pública does not cover. That beat is why the force has run hundreds of Land Rover Defenders and Nissan Patrols alongside its saloon patrol cars: much of it is unmade track, and a rural post needs something that can carry a section of guards off the road.
The Defenders wear the GNR's own scheme, which this model reproduces from photographs taken in the Algarve in April 2009: dark green bodywork under a white roof, the force's full name lettered in green along the white roof side above the windows, a bright green stripe edged in white along the waist, the GNR crest on the rear quarter panel, plain white steel wheels, a spare on the rear door and a blue light bar mounted at the front of the roof. The photographer noted that the Land Rovers and Patrols were 'already somewhat old' by 2009 but 'excellent cross-country with good carrying capacity'. The photographs show both a 110 station wagon at a roadside checkpoint and a 90 hard top parked at a post at Vila Real de Santo António; the 110, the row's base model, is what is modelled here. Which generation of Defender, its engine and how many the GNR bought are not stated in the source, so those figures are left open.
