This Bowler Wildcat Is Our Kind Of SUV, And It Could Be Yours

SUVs are absolutely everywhere these days, and if you stop and think about it, that name has pretty much lost all meaning. The vast majority of them aren’t particularly sporty, nor are they hugely utilitarian. Really, they’re just Vs. And that’s why this Bowler Wildcat has caught our eye.

No, it doesn’t have split-folding rear seats, adaptive cruise control, an 11-inch infotainment touchscreen, or a fuel-sipping hybrid powertrain. But if you take the definition in a needlessly literal manner, then it might be the most SUV-ish SUV ever.

Based very, very loosely on an original Land Rover Defender, the Wildcat was one of the earlier creations of off-road racing specialist Bowler, before the company became a wholesale part of Jaguar Land Rover. Let’s just break down why it might be peak SUV.

Sporty? It was made to tackle events like the Dakar Rally, for Pete's sake. It has enormous long-travel race suspension and a thumping great 6.2-litre Chevrolet V8 under the bonnet. It also has such competition-ready goodies as a battery master switch, FIA-spec bucket seats with six-point harnesses, some easily accessible emergency window hammers and a rally-ready trip computer. You don’t get any of that on a Range Rover, or even a Range Rover so-called Sport.

Utilitarian? Well, it was certainly designed to do its job first and look pretty second. Smushing together a Defender front end with the back of a rally raid racer and topping it all off with some hastily grafted-on Discovery 2 tail lights, it’s not going to win any awards for aesthetics, but it is designed to get you through some of the toughest terrain on Earth.

Vehicle? Erm, yes, it’s one of those. Not only that, but it’s a fully road-legal vehicle, which means that, like every other SUV, you could use it for the school run. Well, as long as you only have one child. Or don’t mind making the rest of them walk.

Despite being eight years old, it’s only covered 1426 miles, at least some of which weren’t too sympathetic, because last year, it ran in the Scottish Summer Hill Rally, an event in which cars of this ilk are flung at the Scottish landscape with much enthusiasm.

If you want to be the one to add to that modest figure, the Wildcat’s up for auction with Collecting Cars, where bidding is up to £27,750 at the time of writing. That’s with two days left on the sale, and we have no idea how much that’s likely to go up in the next 48 hours. Still, you’ll be laughing when next door’s Honda CR-V is flummoxed by the first light dusting of snow next winter.