Charles became an agent for a small range of power upgrades for all Land Rover vehicles. The name ‘Twisted’ was adopted and the business was officially born.

Charles worked from a desk at his Father’s off-road centre, Yorkshire 4x4. Small events were attended for the first time, seen here at the Billing Land Rover Show.

The first Twisted TD5 exhaust systems are produced and development is in full swing. The product range slowly begins to grow. The company begins to run out of Charles’ lounge at home with the garden shed acting as a stores department. Foxy, Charles’ dog, followed him everywhere and essentially grew up in his Defender’s cubby box!

Twisted builds its first demonstrator vehicle, a Black TD5 90, shown here in Image 1. Land Rover Owner Magazine becomes the first publication to test a Twisted Defender on Rockingham Raceway. This very vehicle is still owned by a good friend of the company and has now covered almost 200,000 miles. 2003 also saw the term ‘Performance’ adopted to Twisted shown on the Gale Force edition. All works at this stage were carried out at the local garage in Sutton, Thirsk.

Stock is moved into Charles’ double garage as parts begin to be distributed worldwide. The local fitting of tuning products is outsourced to some seemingly interesting ramp techniques…(image 1) The first 110 demonstrator is created, a double cab pick-up.

The first photographed editorial of a full Twisted Defender conversion is published, featuring sports seats, a leather trim and performance upgrades. The show trailer is replaced for a show truck and demand for the products increases. A change to the logo comes and a 110, is created for a customer who’s desire and ideas to have the very best Defender he could, showed our founder Charles, the demand for customer involved creations really was there.

2006 saw us produce our first full Twisted Build for a customer along with a matching fuel bowser to tow behind. The owner is still a very good friend of the business and has a number of our builds in their fleet. A second Rimini Red 90 followed soon after(with the black contrast roof). Quite remarkably, we saw this build again in 2018 when the owner opted to replace the TD5 engine, for our LS3 V8. Quite a monster!

A Shift in Gear: Charles leaves the family business to focus on Twisted full-time. The original logo is amended and Twisted Performance takes the next step. Testing also develops as our TD5 90 (on 205 Michelin Tyres) took on the Bowler V8 at the Peterborough Speedway!

2008 saw the opening of Twisted’s first workshop, a 2,500 sq. ft unit in Thirsk, North Yorkshire - with a great landlord who never once asked us to sign a lease as he came round monthly to check on our progress! Outside of work hours, it became a Tetris-like procedure to ensure all vehicles were tucked away in such a small space. Later in the year, a 110 Alpine was created as the first special edition to come out of the Twisted workshop. Late 2008 saw the first movement in sponsorship, as three matching 110’s were built for Coca Cola and more specifically the Relentless Energy Drink campaign.

In 2009 our demo took a trip to Germany’s Nurburgring. On the return leg, we were stopped by a fellow Defender driver who challenged us to some drag racing at Santa Pod. The image epitomises the outcome…
Attending events to highlight the development of our own products became a more prominent feature of the calendar. The video shows our lap at the Bruntingthorpe World’s Fastest Land Rover Event’.

2010 brought arguably the most noticeable change to date. The Logo Twisted Performance was rebranded to simply Twisted as we know it today. ‘Think the Unthinkable’ was the slogan of the time, as we were busy creating one-off, specialist builds to meet many interesting customer requirements.

2011 saw the release of the French Edition. Success with the previous editions, the French can be recognised from a grey exterior with contrast black features. Our brand awareness continued to spread across the world building a 2.4 ‘61 plated Camo 90 sent to its new homeland of Malaysia. 2011 didn’t end as well however, as not all of our show vehicles made it to Goodwood in one piece… The Grey 110 fell victim to the low-hanging trees…

2012 saw the beginning of our first LS-Powered V8. Created for the Gumball Rally the following year, the 110 boasted 480bhp and ran a Tremec 5-Speed Manual gearbox. We added an Ivory and Chocolate interior and finished the build in a matte lacquer, over the standard Orkney Grey. 2012 also saw the launch of the Red Edition and the Retro Edition. Based on the Td5 90 we still have today, Bahama Gold Paint with contrast Limestone became the start of the combination we are still building for customers today!

Yorkshire to Monaco (via Russia). It was this trip that Charles realised manual V8’s were not the way forward… 48mph in 1st, 77mph in 2nd and 110mph in 3rd, a twin clutch and an engine that didn’t like slow speeds meant lots of work but great fun!

2014 saw the T40, T40S, T60 & T80 created. Each model was slightly different in spec in order to cover all options. So today if you see a T-Range Twisted, send us a message and we’ll give you more info on it! The same year we moved into our current HQ, a 12,000 sq ft premises. Who’s been to visit us?

Our order of 240 delivery mileage Defender is placed and we begin to take delivery All nine end of run colours in a mixture of XS models arrive with us, can you name the colours? On average, we took stock of 25 units per month. We have a limited number of delivery mileage models remaining which we are currently building into our Series of IIA, Lightweight, III & Stage One V8.

A sad day for all of us Defender lovers, but an exciting day to Twisted. We became the highest stockist of delivery mileage Defender at this point and still are today. In January 2016, our founder Charles Fawcett was invited down to Solihull to see some of our stock complete on the production line.

We announce 20 Classic Twisted builds, all produced to the same specification - everything that we believed ‘made a Twisted’ but gave plenty of scope for customers to put their own stamp on their vehicles. Our new ‘Classic’ Wheel was designed and produced to fit. In August we took our 110 demo on the Atlantic Road Trip in stunning Norway! The Twisted Newspaper was introduced - 10 Issues later and we hope you enjoy reading it as much as we do producing it!

Early May saw our attendance in the Tour De Yorkshire. Our V8 passed through many local towns amongst The Caravan. Later in the month came a very successful first Yorkshire 300 trip, in which 20 customers and their Twisted Defender enjoyed a four-day-trip taking in the Yorkshire scenery and driving roads. 2018 meant the introduction of the Classic Twisted Series II. After high demand for the Classic Series I, we made changes to mirror movements of the original manufacturer when production of the first Series II began in 1958. 20 Builds were produced.

January 29th 2019 saw our release of the final 45 publicly available Defender. Each model has less than 25 miles on the clock and has been kept under cover since rolling off the Solihull line. Our intention was to celebrate the Defender better than the original manufacturer, so we announced our own modern interpretations of the historic Series IIA, Lightweight, III and SOV8.  March 2019 our first appearance at The Geneva International Motor Show. Positioned next to Aston Martin, we were able to show the world what our talented technicians are constantly busy creating back in Yorkshire!

2020 has seen the development of our international expansion. The NA-V8 build has recently completed so keep an eye out for this!  There’s a lot more to come from our Yorkshire workshop!