It’s January, it’s freezing cold outside, the roads are slushy and horrible - it’s not a great time to be a car lover in the UK. But it is a tremendous opportunity to get swept up like a sandstorm in rally raid fever, with Dakar taking place right now in Saudi Arabia and Land Rover involved with support cars ahead of a full factory entry next year. Indeed there’s expected to be a well subscribed Stock category coming over the next few years, if the likes of a Dacia Sanrider seem a bit extreme.
Given its remit and specification, it seems likely that the OCTA (or some variation of it) will be the Defender of choice for the W2RC; it’s the most powerful and most off-road-focused variant of a very capable 4x4. Handy, then, that the launch for the 635hp monster is imminent, just to remind everyone of Land Rover’s commitment to very serious mud-plugging, dune bashing and river fording. And not just vegan leather.
Once upon a time, it was going to be Bowler’s job to make extreme Defenders. The Belper-based company was bought from administration by JLR in 2019, and by 2020 the CSP 575 has been shown, complete with supercharged V8, rally-spec chassis and wild appearance. It was going to be made in 2021 and cost £200,000, right up until it never really happened. And £200k Defenders became those Trophy homages. Pity.
From there, aside from the Defender Challenge rally series that it helped support, we heard precious little from Bowler, and were sad to hear that the brand's factory was wound up at the end of 2024. Another shame, because they made the Land Rovers of your wildest dreams: faster, louder, fiercer and sillier, with decades of competition heritage behind them, they were all very easy to like. An OCTA is cool, no doubt, but doesn’t (yet) have that pedigree and reputation of a Bowler product.
So for those with the ultimate V8 Defender budget but after a slightly different vibe, check this out: a Bowler Bulldog in full Desert costume. As a 2023 car, it’s one of last proper Bowlers made, said to be the penultimate Bulldog and the last one in rally raid spec. It’s suitably awesome, of course, with equipment including a 225-litre (!) fuel cell, an auxiliary power supply, shovels, Bilstein suspension with hydraulic bumpstops, a beefed-up rear subframe, a Gripper diff, hydraulic jacks… you get the idea. The Bulldog Desert specification, appropriately enough, is equipped with everything a rally adventure might require.
While a V8 might seem fitting for this sort of vehicle, the Bulldog is powered by the 3.0 TDV6. Plenty of torque to help you out of sticky situations, at least, though quite what has to happen for a car like this to be immobile beggars belief. Surely nothing in the UK poses much of a challenge to it. One way to be sure, of course, and that’s to add to the 300 miles of running in already under the Bowler Challenge wheels. Whether anyone’s quite courageous enough to throw £200,000 at the scenery as intended remains to be seen, though doing so in a Bulldog would at least ensure being the coolest off-roader in the quarry.
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