LR Legends: David Bowyer
From launching the UK’S first 4x4 magazine and off-road driver training centre and hosting Land Rover shows, there’s not much David Bowyer hasn’t done
Part 4: When it comes to establishing firsts in the Land Rover scene, this man is right up there
It’s easy to see where David Bowyer’s lifelong interest in off-road driving and winching and recovery began. “It was in 1960 that I got to drive my first Land Rover,” he recalls. “Looking back now, I’m sure it was actually a pre-production Series I or a very early production vehicle, although I didn’t know that at the time. I was still at school, but during the holidays I used to help out on my father’s building sites, moving material around and hauling a variety of trailers here and there. If anything got stuck while I was on site, the team would ask me to get the Land Rover going and pull it out. When I think back, how we never broke the back of little Red Devil (it was painted red) I shall never know. We used to drag quite large lorries out of the mire and those that slid into trenches and what have you. My father bought it from a local garage, and it had a recovery crane mounted on the back.
“We used to go off-road driving on some tracks bordering one of the sites and play pirate radio between Land Rover and base station using ex-army 18, 19 and 38 radio sets, and that’s probably where another of my interests, amateur radio, started. As well as an enduring interest in CB as a means of communicating between vehicles in off-road convoys, in 1994 I swotted for my RAE (Radio Amateurs Exam) and gained my call-sign M1AEI, which means I can talk to like-minded enthusiasts over great distances.
“During 1963, the year of the Big Freeze, I used my father’s 1960 Series II and this was my regular runabout once I had passed my driving test. That winter, it was only tractors and four-wheel drives that were out and about on the local lanes. My father then bought himself an Austin Gypsy to replace the Land Rover. I was also very keen on small-bore rifle target shooting, and in fact that is how I met Tina, my wife, when we were both shooting for Hampshire.
“It wasn’t all Land Rovers, though. I got into Autocross and rally driving, firstly with a Mini upgraded with a Janspeed group 2 conversion, and then in a 970cc Mini Cooper S in which I gained my National Rally licence while being the Competitions Secretary for the Salisbury and Shaftsbury Car Club.
“It was in 1960 that I got to drive my first Land Rover. I was still at school”
“I had a lucky escape one evening when I was driving home on the Salisbury to Andover road. I never even saw the car that pulled out in front of me, and found myself thrown out of the Mini as it somersaulted three times into a field. When I saw the state of the car afterwards, there was no doubt that it would all have ended very differently if I hadn’t been thrown clear.”
In 1970, Tina and David got married and he bought a 1958 Series II hard top. Four years later he replaced it with a brand-new Series III station wagon, the extra seats being a necessity as the Bowyer family expanded and towing horseboxes and caravans became the norm. Around this time, David had what he describes as one last motorsport fling, which involved a Rover 2000, 2000TC and 3500 V8 saloons, followed by an MGB GT V8.
Early life and career
His early career did not revolve around Land Rovers and offroading, though. Having completed an extended course at college in Salisbury and gained his ONC and HNC in various building-related subjects, David joined his father’s company, DC Bowyer and Sons, and took over responsibility for all outside works. At one point, he was overseeing the construction of 300 new houses across three sites in Hampshire and Wiltshire. “It was at this time that I discovered my interest in planning and managing projects through to successful outcomes,” he recalls.
When his father became ill and decided to sell the business, David joined a flooring company in Newbury, but later struck out on his own. Initially, he established his own flooring business, and later formed a company specialising in ropes and twine. “I certainly learned a lot about ropes,” he laughs, “but it has stood me in very good stead over the years, as I have been able to use that knowledge to create a range of recovery and tow ropes for use in off-roading and other applications. Nowadays, we even build highly-specialised ropes for boats, and one of our long-standing customers is the RNLI.”
Land Rover vehicles continued to be a part of daily life and in 1978 he acquired his first Range Rover, a 1973 model, which he fondly remembers as “absolutely wonderful”. His love affair with early Series Land Rovers did not die though and he was soon buying and selling a wide variety of vehicles.
“Quite by chance I bought the vehicle that I was to keep for many years and use extensively off-road, a 1954 Series I 86in station wagon known as Sybil. It was around this time that I became part and parcel of the Land Rover Series One Club, holding the position of secretary until 2002. I am still a director of the club today.”
In the early 1980s, David made the bold decision to change career and launch the UK’S first ever 4x4 magazine (Full details in the panel on the opposite page). David then helped to establish and produce the 1986 Land Rover Directory. The following year he published the Association of Rover Clubs Handbook before he became heavily involved in a rather more public initiative.
Land Rover was at that time still part of the state-owned British Leyland empire but Margaret Thatcher’s government had been exploring various options to dispose of the profitable Land Rover division, and one of the potential buyers was the Us-based General Motors Corporation. The outcry from enthusiasts of the marque, and the public in general, was loud and clear and over 1000 Land Rovers converged on Battersea Park in London as a show of support for keeping the company British.
“We wanted to make sure the Prime Minister got the message that the British Government must not sell Land Rover to the Americans,” David remembers. “A convoy of vehicles from Series Is to Range Rovers drove under police escort to 10 Downing Street, and Tony Hutchings presented the petition on behalf of us all.”
Yet more firsts
Meanwhile, in the mid-1980s, David and his family had moved from Hampshire down to Devon. As well as providing space for a growing family with an interest in horses and Land Rovers, their new home also had 15 acres of hillside and valley that was of poor quality for farming. But that didn’t bother David, who had the inspired idea to create Britain’s first purpose-built off-road driver training facility that would be available to the general public.
David takes up the story. “I designed the driving course to include obstacles that would demonstrate the capabilities of the vehicles, but while I wanted it to be challenging it also needed to be safe, non-damaging and environmentally sustainable. It took three months to build the course and then we planted over 1000 trees and shrubs and landscaped the whole area. We finally opened the centre in late 1986 and it is still in use today.
“In total, the course is around one and a half miles in length and carefully designed to include rocky hillside, muddy hollows and deep water. This allows for instruction on steep ascents and descents, side slopes, deep water and mud, rocky terrain, ditches, gullies, rutted areas and so on.”
His timing was perfect, with not just a growing number of private owners interested to learn what their off-road
“We wanted to make sure the British government did not sell Land Rover to the Americans”
“His ability as a natural innovator led him to create the perfect winch”
vehicles could do but also significant interest from the emergency services, local authorities and various public utilities. “We have trained well over 10,000 drivers since we established the centre,” says David, “and along with Keith Hart, Geoff Farmer, Mac Mcclaren and Ian Shacklock I’ve enjoyed teaching people to handle their vehicles off-road. It has given me huge satisfaction to take a novice driver with no off-road experience and see them gain confidence under our instruction and learn how to drive safely, at the right speed, and with respect for the environment.”
At its peak in the 1990s and early 2000s, David and his colleagues were running courses almost every day, and manufacturers would also make use of the centre for testing. “We had two Discovery 1s here prior to the launch in Plymouth in 1989,” he says, “and we have had Mitsubishi, Mercedes, Unimog and Daihatsu visit us. We have trained over 300 Metropolitan Police drivers, plus drivers from the Hampshire and West Mercia forces, and some army drivers.”
For many years, David’s red Land Rover 90 V8 was a familiar sight with its distinctive panels mounted on the sides of the roof rack, advertising his off-road centre. Acquired in 1988, David used the vehicle extensively, both at the centre and for leading the many greenlaning expeditions he organised. “It was very dear to me and it got me through hell and high water and back again on many occasions over the years. Eventually the original V8 got tired, so I replaced it with a 3.9 Efi from a mid-90s Discovery.”
By the early 1990s, off-road driver training sites had proliferated throughout the UK, although few had created the structured and sustainable facilities that David had pioneered. Many simply made use of farmland or moorland, and others used redundant quarries or public rights of way.
Branching out
I first met David in 1992 when I visited him to have an electric winch installed on my Range Rover. At the time, David was considered to be one of the most knowledgeable people in the country in terms of winch selection and fitment and he also ran courses at his off-road centre to teach people how to use them safely, as he still does today.
With the winch successfully and expertly installed, it seemed churlish not to spend a day honing my skills at the centre, and learning from the experts how to get the most from the winch in a variety of difficult and testing scenarios. The experience has stood me in good stead on many occasions since then, both on- and off-road.
I also learned about David’s famous Secret Wales expeditions, and quickly signed-up to join one. “We started these in the early 1990s,” recalls David. “Many of the people who had come to us to learn how to drive off-road were keen to put their new skills to the test, so we came up with the idea of guiding small groups of people across Wales using some 45 miles of green lanes that are public rights-of-way. The expeditions were incredibly popular and great fun, and we were eventually running them every few weeks. I made many lifelong friends on those three-day trips.
“From time-to-time we also used to run our two-day Trophy Training events in the huge woodlands near to us in Devon. They were fun too, with massive helpings of winching opportunities, but I was beginning to appreciate the shortcomings of so many of the commercially-available winches for off-road vehicles.”
David has for many years been operating a mail-order shop from his centre in Devon, offering a wide range of offroad equipment and accessories, all of which he would have tested extensively either at the centre or on one or other of his expeditions and events. It was no coincidence that in certain off-road circles he was known affectionately as Gadget Man because if there was something new on the market, David would be among the first to acquire it and test it in the field.
His experience and ability as a natural innovator, and his desire to create the perfect winch for off-road use, led to him developing a range of waterproof winches specifically designed with off-roading in mind, including the eponymous Bowmotors, the Bowright waterproof solenoid, the G10 and G12 waterproof drum roller-bearing winches and the TDSGoldfish range. He has also designed portable electric winch kits and the portable petrol and diesel twin capstan winches, as well as winch mounts and synthetic winch rope, and the well-known KERR (Kinetic Energy Recovery Rope), plus his Longbow Ground Anchors and specialised winch systems for radio towers. Over the years, the winch business has grown exponentially and David reckons he has sold over 9000 winches to customers across the world.
Throughout these years, David has also been a prolific writer of articles and features on off-road driving techniques and winching and recovery best-practice, and in the early 1990s he also scripted the first off-road driver training video, which was filmed at his centre in Devon by a very youthful Nick Dimbleby, who was a media studies student at Sussex University at the time. This was followed by a video dedicated to winching techniques.
David and his associate Keith Hart were also respected experts in preparing vehicles for extensive overland expeditions, and it was to them that I turned in 1993 when I was planning a two-week jaunt across Iceland. Keith helped me to prepare the vehicle and advised on expedition equipment, and we also designed and fabricated a bespoke roof-rack for my Range Rover that would accommodate an additional spare wheel, pioneer tools, luggage and four jerrycans. A 3.9 V8 being a thirsty beast at the best of times, and fuel stations being few and far between in the Icelandic interior, at least in those days.
When Richard Green and his colleagues launched the first national Land Rover event at Billing in the late 1980s, it was all but inevitable that David would be at the centre of things, and indeed this literally proved to be the case. The event was originally conceived to provide an opportunity for the readers of their magazine to come together at a familythemed weekend of camping and off-road driving with
entertainment on-site and participation from the various Land Rover clubs, and to provide a forum for traders to promote their offerings.
David found himself elevated to master of ceremonies in the arena, and also hosted demonstrations of winching and vehicle recovery techniques. “Thinking back,” he says, “I’ve probably attended over 200 shows over the last 35 years, starting with Traction in Action at the Shrewsbury Showground and encompassing Billing, Malvern, Peterborough, Kelmarsh and Shepton Mallet.”
Life outside of work
As well as being involved on the show circuit, David is a passionate greenlaner, escaping every few months with a small group of friends. “It keep me sane. I enjoy visiting new parts of the country and driving new routes, and it’s great to spend some time away from the office, the telephone and the computer. I’m a strong supporter of GLASS and I sponsor and contribute to their publications.”
The famous red V8 90 has long since moved on to pastures new, and David has of late fulfilled a long-term dream to build what he defines as his ultimate Land Rover. Based on a 1993 Defender 90 hard top, David has completely rebuilt the vehicle and it is an impressive thing to see. In the end, the vehicle required a new chassis and the rather tired 200Tdi was replaced with a bespoke-build 300Tdi engine.
G12 LRO has been turned into a formidable off-road machine, but it is also very appropriately fitted with, and filled with, every conceivable bit of kit that might ever be required both on- and off-road. The on-board gear also reflects his enduring interest in amateur radio. “I fitted an Icon 706 MK11G that covers HF, VHF and UHF frequencies,” he reveals. Once a Gadget Man, always a Gadget Man, but the outcome is one man’s take on perfecting and personalising a Defender.
Recently a new stablemate has joined it – one of the 400 Heritage Edition models that were built towards the end of Defender production at Solihull. The car was bought new by one of David’s closest friends, who sadly died earlier this year at the age of 61. His widow and daughters could not bear the idea of selling the car, and were delighted when they reached an agreement with David that he should take it on.
Today, David remains irrepressibly enthusiastic and active in the Land Rover scene, especially in the field of winch challenges. As well as ongoing commitments at the Series I club, he continues to operate his off-road driving centre and accessories and winch business. This means he is on the road a lot with his mobile display trailer, attending major Land Rover shows up and down the country. It is also not unknown for him to step into a display arena with a mic in hand!