Land Rover: The Story of the Car that Conquered the World. Ben Fogle

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СКАЧАТЬ even maintain and manage the cars for you. Like stabling of the finest racehorses, the company will deliver the Bowler Defenders to the rally course then take them away at the end and clean and make any necessary adjustments afterwards. The owners just need to turn up, race and go home.

      I asked Drew what made Derbyshire such a good place for his manufacturing.

      ‘Rural communities have the ability to fix things,’ he explained. ‘We have some of the greatest engineers and manufacturers. Locally we have Rolls-Royce, Bombardier and Toyota.’ If you want something made, come to Derbyshire.

      Intrigued to know why he had continued with Land Rovers, I asked him why he still worked with this marque.

      ‘They’re like a fungus that you can’t get rid of,’ he replied. ‘I learnt to drive in a Series I and it was the same car I started rallying in. Today people want the nostalgia of the cars from their past or their childhood; we revert back to what we know, there is reassurance in something we remember. We have every customer from billionaires to builders; they are all drawn to the classless car.’

      In the corner of the workshop stood another Series I that looked unlike anything I had ever seen before.

      ‘This one has been totally rebuilt for a customer in the Middle East. It has power steering, air conditioning, V8 engine, proper brakes,’ Drew explained.

      It was a stunning-looking vehicle, and I wondered if perhaps this was the next period of evolution in the cottage industry of Land Rovers.

      ‘There was near panic and hysteria last year,’ admitted Drew. ‘People heard that production of the Defender was about to stop and there was a mad scramble to get a car.

      ‘There are two types of Land Rover enthusiasts,’ he continued, ‘those who wanted to get one as an investment and those who had always wanted a Land Rover and thought they’d get one before it was too late.’

      Bowler has a loyal customer base.

      ‘Our customers often have a top-of-the-range Range Rover, and a Defender, and they complete the set with a Bowler rally car,’ Drew revealed.

      I wondered whether wives ever have much input. Drew rolled his eyes and smiled.

      ‘“It’s an investment, darling,” is the most common excuse for buying a Bowler Land Rover. We always have to handle the wives,’ he admitted. ‘The second most common reply from a prospective customer about to sign for a car is, “I’ll just check with my wife.”’

      The worst, though, Drew revealed, is the customer who arrives with his ‘enthusiastic mate’ who is invariably a hobby mechanic. The ‘friend’ will moan and complain about the engineering and mechanics and quite literally talk his friend out of the business.

      ‘The Land Rover is an assuring vehicle,’ Drew said. ‘We see them used by search and rescue, the police, the coastguard, ambulance service and the military, and we think, if it’s good enough for them, it’s good enough for me.’

      Rally cars aside, Land Rovers had so far proved to be the ultimate vehicles for the adventurous for more than two decades. Yet the most adventurous event of all was about to hit the scene. The ‘Olympics of 4×4’, as it was dubbed, began in 1980 with the Camel Trophy. These new adventure races started with a course that took drivers along the Trans-Amazonian highway in Series II Land Rovers. The events were all about adventure and expedition, and in the early years they took place in Sumatra, Papua New Guinea, Zaire, Brazil, Borneo, Australia, Madagascar (the first north–south crossing) and Sulawesi, before returning to the Amazon.

      These gruelling tests of human endurance brought together teams from around the world who hoped to triumph in some of the most treacherous off-road conditions imaginable. Teamwork and camaraderie were crucial. The competitive element came in a series of ‘Special Tasks’ – such as winching and timed driving routes – in which the national teams competed against each other.

      Between 1981 and 1998, Land Rover was the primary sponsor of the Camel Trophy adventure competition. In each of those seventeen years the company provided a fleet of vehicles for the international teams to use; however, the only event that featured Series IIIs as team vehicles was the one that took place in 1983. That year the Camel Trophy was held in Zaire and featured crew from several countries. The 1000-mile journey crossed terrain ranging from knee-deep mud to desert sand, but the biggest obstacle was the heat – 45 degrees centigrade in the shade, with humidity at 95 per cent.

      In the 1990s, the Camel Trophy headed to Siberia and the USSR, followed by Tanzania, Burundi, Guyana, Argentina, Paraguay, Chile (the ‘Road to Hell’ event), Belize, Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras (controversially serving 500 out-of-season lobsters at a dinner), Kalimantan (1000 miles and 18 rollovers to celebrate the first crossing of the island 100 years previously) and Mongolia.

      The Camel Trophy, however, did not simply change venue; over the years the event evolved from a mud-plugging expedition to include elements of adventure sport, such as kayaking, mountain biking and winter sports. Teams were selected by each competing nation in competitions held nationally, designed to test the athletic, engineering and driving prowess of potential candidates.

      Changing environmental sentiments and respect for the Earth began to impact the race as people questioned the damage that the cars caused to the natural landscapes they traversed. So by 1993 the race included green tasks such as building an environmental monitoring station in the jungle so that biologists could accurately study the flora and fauna of an area that had barely been explored previously. In all the events, the convoy’s progress reopened roads and tracks that had fallen into disuse and frequently rebuilt bridges and repaired sections of damaged tracks.

      In 1998 the Camel Trophy returned to Argentina and Chile for the penultimate Tierra del Fuego event. It was here that the Land Rover Freelander made its debut, when it was used to speed the competitors 6000 miles across the remote and snowy terrain. Outdoor pursuits dominated that event, and shortly afterwards Land Rover, still a major sponsor, felt that the Camel Trophy was moving away from adventure and exploration and issued a press release that indicated they would not sponsor future events. This ultimately led to the cancellation of the 1999 event, which was planned for Peru.

      What we have left now are memories of the competition’s glory years of the 1980s and 90s, when the Camel Trophy’s distinctive yellow-orange Land Rovers travelled to diverse places across the globe.

      That was not quite the end, though, as Land Rover’s role as the mainstay of tough off-road adventure was briefly reprised in 2003 with the Land Rover G4 Challenge. This hugely expensive event was staged by Land Rover itself, and although slicing through jungles was out of the question, special off-road stages were held to test the capability of the vehicles as well as the skills of the drivers, using Defenders, Discoverys, Freelanders and Range Rovers.

      The obligatory gruelling aspect of this event came from physical challenges such as kayaking, orienteering, mountain biking and abseiling. The first competition was won by Belgian fighter pilot Rudi Theoken, who turned down the first prize of a brand-new Range Rover and requested two Defenders instead!

      Following the first G4 Challenge, in 2003, G4-Edition Defenders became available for the general public to buy. As well as the distinctive Tangiers Orange livery of the competition vehicles, yellow and black versions were also produced. Defender 90 and 110 versions were available, with front A-bar, roll cage, side steps and front spotlights as standard, as well as G4 badging.

      Another G4 Challenge followed in 2006 and a third was scheduled for 2009, СКАЧАТЬ