Land Rover Series III values: 88 level with 109, the late rise and the slide since 2022
What the Series III sells for at auction
In 2025 the median Series III sold for £13,008 across 93 sales, much where it was in 2024. In real terms, typical Series III prices were down about 13% over the five years to 2025, once inflation is accounted for.
| Variant | Sold | Typical range | Median |
|---|---|---|---|
| Series III 88 | 343 | £7,547 - £18,556 | £12,600 |
| Series III 109 | 146 | £5,968 - £18,468 | £12,324 |
| Series III | 119 | £5,603 - £13,369 | £8,960 |
| Series III Fire | 7 | £5,098 - £9,069 | £8,050 |
Show the year-by-year mediansHide the year-by-year medians
| Year | Sold | Median | In 2025 money |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 (so far) | 41 | £10,076 | |
| 2025 | 93 | £13,008 | £13,008 |
| 2024 | 107 | £13,000 | £13,499 |
| 2023 | 89 | £11,000 | £11,804 |
| 2022 | 86 | £16,558 | £18,963 |
| 2021 | 70 | £12,324 | £15,240 |
| 2020 | 31 | £11,812 | £14,968 |
| 2019 | 25 | £12,008 | £15,372 |
| 2018 | 20 | £10,423 | £13,570 |
| 2017 | 16 | £5,102 | £6,795 |
| 2016 | 19 | £6,750 | £9,223 |
| 2015 | 8 | £5,500 | £7,590 |
| 2014 | 3 | £8,054 | £11,159 |
- £18,760Series III 88
- £7,840Series III 88
- £3,472Series III 109
- £24,152Series III 88
- £7,650Series III 88
Strong evidence. 615 recorded sales and a dozen or more a year: the median and the range are well founded. Based on 615 sold results from public classic car auctions (2004 to 10 August 2026). Sold prices, not asking prices, and not a valuation: condition, history and specification vary from car to car. Inflation-adjusted figures use the ONS CPIH index, in 2025 money.
The Series III is the most numerous Land Rover ever built and the cheapest of the Series cars, and Land Rover Series 3 values, as the searches put it, are the largest recent record of any leaf-sprung Land Rover: 615 recorded sales since 2004, nearly 90 a year lately, at a median of £11,600, with the middle half between £6,600 and £18,000. Three-quarters of the cars offered find a buyer. The spread runs from a £500 project to £350,700 for one American sale of a car with a story, and most of the record is an ordinary 88 or 109, sold in Britain to someone who wants the last of the old Land Rovers at the lowest price there is.
The Series III model guide covers the car, the engines, the Stage 1 V8 and the Lightweight, and what to check. This page is about the money, and about a market that rose later than any other Land Rover’s and is now giving some of it back.
88 level with 109
The variant table on this page answers the one question every Series buyer asks, and the answer is that the market does not care. The 88, the short-wheelbase car and the biggest line in the record with 343 recorded sales, has a median of £12,600; the 109, across 146, has £12,300; and the upper quartiles sit within £100 of each other at about £18,500. The 88 is the one most people want to drive and the 109 the one with the room and the seats, and because the 109 costs more to restore for the same money at the end, a buyer who wants the long-wheelbase car has the better of the bargain. The cars the source never narrowed beyond “Series III”, 119 of them at £9,000, are mostly the projects and the working vehicles, and they pull the overall median below the figures for the identified ones.
Where the 109 pulls ahead is in its rarer forms. The twelve-seat station wagon, the County with its cloth seats and side stripes, the Stage 1 V8 of 1979 to 1985 with the Range Rover’s 3.5-litre engine and permanent four-wheel drive, and the ex-military and forward-control cars all sell above the ordinary range, at £18,000 to £28,000 for good examples, on too few sales for a median. The Lightweight, the ex-military air-portable 88, has a page of its own. At the very top sits the one American sale at £350,700 in 2025, which describes nothing but itself.
What moves the price of a Series III
The chassis, as on every leaf-sprung Land Rover. The steel ladder frame rots at the rear crossmember, the outriggers, the spring hangers and the dumb irons while the aluminium body above it looks fine, and the bulkhead rots at the footwells and the door pillars; a car on a sound or galvanised chassis, with a documented bulkhead and the receipts, sits in the upper half of its range whatever the paint, and a car with a welded-up frame is a project whatever it looks like. The 2.25 petrol and diesel engines and the 2.6 six are simple, cheap and well supported and move the price least, though a car with a later 2.5 diesel or a V8 fitted needs its paperwork.
Then what the car is and was. A station wagon with its seats and its tropical roof, a County with its trim, a Stage 1 with its original engine and a car with an ex-military, ex-utility or ex-service history all add; a genuine soft-top with a good tilt sells above a hard-top of the same date. Originality counts: the correct engine, the original wheels and the period colour add, while a coil-sprung conversion or a modern diesel takes away with the enthusiasts even as it adds with the users. Honest patina on a sound chassis is worth more than fresh paint over a patched one, and mileage, on a vehicle that has usually worked for its living, means almost nothing.
The late rise, and the slide since 2022
The chart shows a car that the boom reached last. The yearly median was only £5,000 to £6,800 from 2015 to 2017, when a Series III was still an old working vehicle; it rose to £10,400 in 2018, £12,000 in 2019 and £12,300 in 2021, and peaked at £16,600 in 2022, when the pandemic demand for anything with a Land Rover badge reached the cheapest of them. It fell to £11,000 in 2023, recovered to £13,000 in 2024 and 2025, and the 2026 figure so far is about £10,100. Restated in today’s money the Series III has lost about a third since 2022 but is still worth nearly double what it was in 2017.
Two things are happening. The record has changed shape, with the online auctions bringing far more ordinary and unrestored cars to sale than the catalogued auctions ever did, and a median built on those is lower than one built on restored station wagons. And the boom that lifted the Series II and the Defender came to the Series III last and is leaving it first, because it was the car bought on the way up by people who wanted a Land Rover at any price. The good station wagons, the Stage 1s and the ex-military cars have held up; the ordinary working 88, which is most of the record, has not, and a sound one is cheaper in real terms than it has been since 2018.
Where Series IIIs change hands
The record is mostly British and increasingly online. The regional sale rooms, from Yorkshire to the Welsh borders, sell the working cars and the projects, and the online platforms on both sides of the Atlantic now sell as many again; a single week in early August 2026 shows the spread, with 88s at £7,650 at a Yorkshire sale and £7,840 at a Herefordshire one, a 109 at £3,500 at the same sale, and 88s at £18,800 on a British platform and £24,200 on an American one. The best restored cars and the Stage 1s go through the Land Rover specialists and the clubs at prices above the auction range. Whether a recorded price includes the buyer’s premium varies by sale, which is one more reason to read the usual range rather than any single result.
Insuring, restoring, selling
For an agreed-value policy a good 88 or 109 belongs around its median and a restored station wagon or a Stage 1 in the upper half of the range; an ex-military car with its history is insured on the car. On restoration the arithmetic is the chassis’s: a replacement galvanised chassis and a bulkhead cost more than the difference between a project and a good car, so the right buy is the car with that work done, and the project is for the owner who wants the doing of it. If you are selling, the spring and early summer are the season, the photograph that sells the car is of the chassis rather than the paint, and the honest expectation for an ordinary 88 is its median, not the figure a restored County fetched in 2022.
Related
The Series III is the last of the line that began with the Series I, which sells for a little more, and the car the Defender replaced, which now sells for nearly three times as much. For the decade, see British classic cars of the 1970s. For how all the figures on this site are compiled, see what classic cars sell for.
