Top Gear Gets a First Drive in the Bowler Land Rover Defender

We featured a story on the new Bowler Land Rover Defender race series several weeks ago. The race-equipped Defender would be the sole vehicle competing in the Land Rover Defender Challenge, a competition that has Land Rover enthusiasts across the globe salivating.

Well the lucky folks over at Top Gear got the opportunity to get behind the wheel of a Bowler Land Rover Defender and have reported their first impressions in a comprehensive question-and-answer format on their page which can be found here. We strongly urge you to check it out, but for the sake of our readers we’ve distilled some of the highlights.

The Bowler Defender has been largely unchanged. It’s designed for off-road use. It drives as such, and that is a good thing. It does feature some added safety features standard on racing vehicles like a five-point harness, two fire extinguishers, kill switches, an intercom and, of course, a roll cage.

• The Bowler Defender features the same 2.2 liter diesel engine found in stock Defenders, though it has been chipped and tuned (new intercooler, induction kit, exhaust) to produce 180 hp and 331 ft-lb of torque.
• The Bowler Defender uses the same six-speed manual gearbox found in stock models.

The Bowler Defender is awesome.