Land Rover Legends
Drew Bowler was hugely respected in the comp safari world. This is his story
DREW Bowler was barely into his 20s when, in 1985, he built his first Land Rover-based trialler at the family farm near Belper in Derbyshire. It was an immediate winner. Others in the trials and safari scene took note and Drew was soon commissioned to build similar vehicles, with his first customer taking delivery in 1986. Those early vehicles were 88-inch hybrids based on shortened Range Rover chassis and the design evolved rapidly, to the extent that by the early 1990s you could build your own Bowler comp safari racer using a kit of parts supplied by Drew. Bowler Motorsport was born.
Drew’s first design became the basis for the Bowler Tomcat 88 which was launched in 1986. It proved to be a popular and potent choice for competitors in both the UK and Europe over the following years, and in 1991 Drew won the comp safari at the ARC National Rally held at Newnham Park near Plymouth driving a Tomcat.
An interesting series of features by the late Tim Webster appeared in Land Rover Owner magazine in 1992 that are worth revisiting here. Tim was a trials enthusiast and passionate greenlaner and wrote that he had been ‘watching the developments in the comp safari racing scene with interest’. Comp safari, where vehicles are driven against the clock over a cross-country course of several miles, was in those days still dominated by Land Rover vehicles in various stages of modification, but Tim felt that ‘what had started as a fairly low-tech form of motor racing had recently blossomed into modern motorsport where quite radical vehicle designs are beginning to show their integrity and pace'. Tim nevertheless took comfort in the fact that there was still a way to compete effectively in a Land Rover-based vehicle for those with less deep pockets, and he set out tc prove it by building what he called a 'budget racer'. The construction of the vehicle was documented 00 in a series of features over ll months and was invaluable to anyone considering building a comp safari racer. Tim went straight to Drew Bowler, who by then had either built himself or supplied hone builders with kits of parts for over 40 of his racers. Tim's starting point was a mid-1970s Range Rover which he'd acquired for £350, although it had already been hacked into a rick-up and was missing k engine and gearbatc The donor Range Rover was delivered to Drew's workshop, stripped down, the wheelbase shortened from 100 to 88 and the chassis welded back together in Drew's jig Intensive testing and competition experience had demonstrated to rnemes cattiodaction that an RA-inch wheelbase was the optimum for the comp safari courses en/name:red nt the time The qurdv Bowler svacelivinc and roll cam built by Drew to his own proven design and capable of withstanding multiple end- over-end or sideways rollovers without significant distortion, was then welded to the shortened chassis to create an immensely strong structure. The axles and running gear of the donor Range Roves were overhauled and re-used, although the standard 3.54 ratio differentials were thought to be too high for racing and were replaced with a 4.7 from a Series DT at the front and a similar ratio from a Series 1 at the rear. Subtle reinforcements were welded-in amund the A-frame ball joint to prevent it tearing itself out of the standard bracket during racing. Most of the body panek were fabricated in aluminium by Drew and pretty much the only genuine Land Rover items used were the outer front wings, cut back to take 90 wheelarch extensions and the bonnet which was from a 110, but these were enough to make the racer recognisably a Land Rover. A secondhand Rover V8 engine was purchased for £150, cleaned and overhauled, and mated to a used four-speed zearbox and clutch bouzht for £100. Tim chose tc
in an upgrade to extended-piston adjustable Bilstein shocks that transformed the handling and, most importantly, helped keep all four wheels in contact with the ground for more of the time. The completed ‘budget racer’ reflected the state-ofthe-art thinking of the early 1990s, and Tim was keen to put it to the test.
Once the final shakedown had been completed, Tim secured an entry for the first of the reincarnated Welsh Hillrallies, held in October 1992, which was a worthy successor to the three original, groundbreaking Hillrallies that had taken place in 1971 and 1972. The original plan had been for Tim to act as co-pilot to Drew but for some reason Tim didn’t take up his place and it was Drew’s brother, Mark, who sat in the left-hand seat on the event. The ‘budget racer’ finished in 20th place and was sold to a private buyer shortly after the event, presumably having fulfilled its purpose which was to show the magazine’s readers exactly what was involved in building their own Bowler, and how much it would cost. Whether Tim ever drove the ‘budget racer’ in competitive anger is unclear!
In 1995 Drew created a 100-inch version of the Tomcat which was more suited to high-speed events, but this was overtaken by the new Bowler Wildcat 100 in 1997. The Wildcat was the first Bowler vehicle designed and built fully in-house, establishing the company as a vehicle OEM which was a very significant step-change for Drew and the company. With the new Wildcat now the focus of the company’s attention, the rights to the Tomcat were sold in 2001.
The Wildcat had a tubular semi-spaceframe construction with an integral roll-cage and was panelled in fibreglass. Discovery axles were used, with the front located by radius arms and a Panhard rod, and the rear by trailing arms and a Watt’s linkage. Engine options included 4.0, 4.6 and 5.0-litre V8s with several levels of tune, as well as 2.2 and 2.5-litre diesels. Doing away with the modified Range Rover or Discovery chassis also meant that it was much lighter than the Tomcat. A neat innovation was a steel plate that could be lowered by hydraulic ram from inside the vehicle to lift it clear of the lowest point of travel of the front and rear axles, allowing easy wheel changing and to help with vehicle recovery. The steel plate also acted as underbody protection when in the retracted position.
Drew launched the Bowler Championship in 1996 as an annual competition for owners of all Bowler racers, and it quickly became one of the most popular off-road events in the calendar. By 1999 it embraced three categories and the contest extended over six rounds: Class One for 88-inch Bowler vehicles, Class Two for 100s, and Class Three for diesel-powered Bowler vehicles. The prizes on offer that year made it well worth entering: a 3.9 V8 engine, a performance Tdi engine and a Bowler 100 inch Tomcat frame meant there was no shortage of contenders.
In 1999 the Wildcat 200 was launched with a lighter frame and even higher levels of performance than its predecessor, and in 2000 the company competed in the Dakar Rally for the first time. In the 2005 Dakar Bowler fielded the second largest team after Mitsubishi and achieved the highest percentage of finishers.
The Wildcat had become a popular choice for small teams and privateers and earned a reputation as a reliable, robust and fast competition vehicle. By now, the only part of the vehicle that was recognisably a Land Rover was the front grille and the headlamp layout, a situation that had been mirrored some years earlier as French company Halt’up! had pushed its Range Rover-based Paris-dakar vehicles ever further in the competitive performance stakes, to the extent that Land Rover itself had to insist that modifications be made to the front to reinstate some of the look and character of the Range Rover whose badge it carried. The Wildcat was still powered by Land Rover drivetrains, though, and this would become important over the coming years.
Famously, the BBC’S Top Gear programme borrowed a Wildcat for the episode that aired on May 11, 2003. Richard Hammond was immensely impressed by the performance of its 5.0-litre V8 Land Rover-tvr hybrid engine, which churned-out 300 bhp and could reach 60 mph from a standing start in 4.8 seconds – faster, as Hammond gleefully pointed out, than an Aston Martin DB7. But Hammond didn’t end
“The Wildcat had become a popular choice for small teams and privateers and earned a reputation as a reliable, robust and fast competition vehicle still powered by Land Rover drivetrains”
there, announcing breathlessly during his off-road drive that this was “the most fun I’ve ever had in a car” and deciding that the Wildcat was “the best off-roader in the world” before finally declaring himself to be “a driving god”! He clearly liked the Bowler Wildcat.
Just as he’d done with the Tomcat some years earlier, Drew sold the Wildcat manufacturing rights in 2007 to allow Bowler to focus on its next big project, known as the Nemesis. Drew’s son, Sam, is today a key member of the Bowler team and specialises in vehicle electrical systems having joined the family firm after completing a two-year foundation degree with Rolls-royce at Derby: “I remember asking Dad at the time why he was selling the Wildcat, and his answer was that the company always had to keep moving forward to ensure it was at the leading edge of engineering development, and the focus was now on something lighter, faster and better than the Wildcat. Years later I realised that dad had bought from Land Rover all the remaining stocks of Discovery 2 axles and, once these had been used up, the days of the Wildcat were over. Dad wouldn’t use second-hand parts.”
The Nemesis was the first Bowler vehicle to feature independent suspension and delivered another step up in overall performance. And it looked fundamentally different from its predecessors: the Nemesis took its frontal styling cues from the Range Rover Sport. According to Car magazine ‘around 40 per cent of the Nemesis is scavenged from the Land Rover parts bin. All the visual cues such as lights, grille, handles, mirrors and windscreen are retained, as is the majority of the drivetrain, albeit beefed up with Bowler’s own mix of uprated parts’. Body panels were made from composites and carbon fibre, and engine options included 4.0 and 4.4-litre normally-aspirated V8 and a 4.2 litre supercharged V8. The Nemesis was designed from the outset as a rally-raid vehicle and aimed squarely at events like the Dakar and the Rallye des Pharaons, and came with a 415 litre racing fuel cell which made it eminently suitable for longrange desert rally stages.
And what was it like to drive? Car magazine had this to say: ‘With nearly 300lb ft of torque arriving at just 1500rpm, the Nemesis is off the mark like a scalded cat. The tsunami of power is then transferred to the huge 275/60 18 inch Kumho off-road tyres through a six-speed manual gearbox strengthened with Ricardo internals. The acceleration on any surface is little short of astonishing. Keep your foot in, and the 60/40 torque-splitting centre differential serves up a dollop of power oversteer. And it’s so controllable that you can’t help but grin through the fear. Looking at the on-paper figures really doesn’t do the Nemesis justice though. A 4.6 second 0-60mph time and a top speed of 140mph are blindingly quick for an off-roader, but in reality they only tell half the story. The most amazing thing about the Bowler is that these figures are achievable not just on a sticky tarmac drag strip but on loose gravel, mud and the sand-covered dune roads of Mauritania’.
The Bowler Nemesis figured prominently in the line-up for the 2008 Dakar Rally but the event was cancelled at the last minute when the organisers announced that they could not guarantee the safety of the competitors. This followed the horrific murder on Christmas Eve 2007 of four members of a French family on holiday in Mauritania, through which the rally was expected to pass.
David Harlow was a friend of Drew’s and was involved in the preparation work, acting as technical liaison between Bowler and Land Rover. “The team had been working ludicrously long hours to complete the construction of the rally vehicles, and I was only a part-time member with a day job to do! Drew had invited me to join the rally support crew and I spent my weekends with the team, helping out where I could. The last two vehicles were literally completed with hours to spare and rushed onto the ferry to Lisbon. It was a devastating blow when the organisers cancelled the event at the very last minute, but Drew insisted on paying everyone for their time and involvement. That was just the way he was, a very honourable and fair man, despite the fact that it undoubtedly put a huge strain on the company’s finances. It would have been interesting to have seen how the new Nemesis performed had the rally gone ahead, although I think we all knew that we were in for a busy rally keeping the ten Nemesis cars going, given the limited development and shake-down most of the cars had had.”
The Nemesis evolved into the EXR and one of the consequences of the cancellation of the 2008 Dakar was that Drew had concluded that a road-going vehicle should also be developed, and this became known as the EXR-S.
However, 2011 brought dramatic and farreaching changes when a majority stake in Drew’s business was acquired by Coventrybased CPP, a company that around the same time announced variously its ambitious intentions to begin construction of Jensen sports cars in Coventry, form a partnership with Milan-based styling outfit Zagato, and acquire
“Just as he’d done with the Tomcat some years earlier, Drew sold the Wildcat manufacturing rights in 2007 to allow Bowler to focus on its next big project, known as the Nemesis”
the Dutch sports car company Spyker.
Shortly afterwards it was announced that EX-JLR chief engineer Steve Haywood would be Bowler’s new managing director, while Drew would remain focused on its motorsports activities. During his long career at Land Rover, Haywood had led the Freelander, Discovery 2 and Discovery 3 projects to launch before leaving JLR in 2010. One of Haywood’s first tasks was to bring the road-going EXR-S into production, but in fact he stayed with the company for less than eight months, stepping down in January 2012.
CPP meanwhile found itself in financial trouble and this was probably not helped when the press revealed that its coowner, Russian millionaire Vladimir Antonov, was being investigated for financial irregularities. CPP (Manufacturing) Ltd collapsed into administration in 2012, but thankfully Drew was able to ensure that Bowler emerged from the wreckage unscathed.
In March 2019 the BBC reported that ‘Mr Antonov has been jailed in Russia for two and a half years for bank fraud, having left the UK in 2015 after being charged by the Lithuanian authorities with stripping some £400m from a Lithuanian bank. The following year, the High Court in London ruled that he also owed a collapsed Latvian bank £65m after committing financial fraud’.
Despite these distractions, Drew and his team were able to launch the EXR-S at the Goodwood Festival of Speed in July 2012. The new vehicle was very well-received by the press, and evo magazine was truly blown away by it when they tested it in early 2013: ‘The £186,000 Bowler is described by its makers as an ‘all-terrain supercar’. The ‘S’ is for supercharged, because without the need to conform to FIA regulations the road car gets the full-fat 550bhp, 461lb ft supercharged 5.0-litre V8 compared to the EXR race car’s naturally aspirated 300bhp, 429lb ft version. When you set off down the road it’s almost disarmingly easy to drive initially, because the standard six-speed Range Rover automatic means you have nothing more difficult to do than press the throttle. The power-assisted steering is light and easy to twirl too, so despite the Bowler’s butch appearance you don’t have to be a Hercules to potter around town. And although it does feel wide, sleeping policemen have never felt so insignificant.
‘Urban manoeuvring is where the sanity begins and ends though, because as soon as you hit a national speed limit sign the performance becomes as wild as the car looks. Nail the throttle, the nose lifts, the engine roars and you charge at the horizon in a way that leaves you utterly flabbergasted. The EXR-S has a claimed 0-62mph time of just 4.2 seconds. As you might have gathered, I like the Bowler EXR-S. A lot. I have also worked out the precise occasion and purpose that I’d want one for: come the apocalypse, it’s the car I’d pick for trying to outrun the chaos’.
Drew’s long-standing dedication and commitment to Land Rover over many years was recognised in 2012 when Bowler and Land Rover announced a brand partnership that would see ‘Powered by Land Rover’ on the EXR rally car and EXR-S. The deal also meant that Bowler would benefit from access to components, powertrain and chassis engineering, and technical and development support from Land Rover. Commenting at the time, Drew said: “We’re delighted to announce this partnership, which brings very positive benefits to both Bowler and Land Rover. We’ve only ever used Land Rover powertrains, and this relationship will give us access to current Land Rover technologies, and a great platform from which to support our racing activities and develop future models.”
“It was tremendous to see JLR’S recognition of the pioneering role that Bowler had played over the years in developing extremely competitive and high-performance vehicles based on Land Rover powertrains,” says Sam Bowler. “Dad was very accomplished at spotting things that Land Rover themselves had missed, in terms of how their engineering could be adopted in extreme off-road competitive motorsport as well as how their vehicles could be developed to embrace new markets, and I think JLR really recognised and appreciated this over the years.”
The partnership with JLR evolved further in October 2013 when the new ‘Defender Challenge by Bowler’ was announced. Initiated and inspired by Drew, it was to run for three years from 2014 to 2016, after which the end of Defender production stopped play. Defender Challenge was a one-make rally series operated by Bowler Motorsport and designed to act as a ‘feeder series’ to the annual Dakar Rally and other global rally-raid competitions. Bowler created specially modified Defender 90 hard top vehicles with uprated 2.2-litre diesel engines, standard six-speed manual gearboxes, controlled Kuhmo tyres and full Msa-approved roll-cages and fire extinguisher systems. The vehicles would also remain road-legal and could be driven to events if required and were available to buy for £50,000 plus entry fees of between £10,000 and £14,000, depending on the
“Drew’s long-standing dedication and commitment to Land Rover over many years was recognised in 2012 when Bowler and Land Rover announced a brand partnership”
level of support required.
Drew said at the time: “The rally customers coming to Bowler have changed. They’re not all experienced racers but people looking for excitement and adventure and an achievable path towards world-class events”. Without a doubt, the Challenge also helped maintain the Defender brand in the public eye as the model moved inexorably towards the end of production. Bowler has also been involved in supporting JLR on a host of other projects that, unfortunately, we can’t talk about. But suffice it to say that Bowler’s help has been of inestimable value.
In 2015 Bowler secured UK Government funding to develop the ‘Cross Sector Platform’, which is an exciting design philosophy to create a multi-use vehicle rolling chassis. The idea was to create a chassis able to deliver outstanding mobility, agility and performance that could be fitted with powertrains from multiple manufacturers and kitted-out to meet many different applications and customer requirements, from security and border patrol to adventure safaris, emergency response, land and estates management, personnel transportation, utility, exploration, humanitarian aid and more. Bowler developed a CSP Concept Vehicle powered by Land Rover’s V6 diesel-based powertrain and technology, leading to the launch of the Bowler Bulldog in 2015.
The Bulldog has a 110-inch wheelbase coupled with Land Rover’s Mono-turbo V6 diesel and supercharged V6 petrol powertrains and suspension. Hand-built to order with Bowler’s expertise and craftsmanship, the Bulldog is available in standard trim or with a range of optional extras and accessories with prices starting at £135,000.
Tragically, in November 2016 Drew Bowler passed away unexpectedly aged just 53, and the off-road world mourned a true pioneer and innovator, and an all-round nice guy. “Dad did more than anyone to bring Rally-raid to the UK,” says Sam proudly. “He developed a succession of highlyaccomplished, innovative and race-winning cars, and took Bowler to the highest levels of international motorsport including the Dakar Rally, where the Bowler cars and team spirit shone brightly.”