Land Rovers are very popular in the UK. I know this. I have never heard Clarkson and his mates say anything that wasn’t at least in some way positive about them.
I guess it makes sense. They’re big, high-up on their wheels and the absolute top – radically excepting that new Victoria Beckham mobile – when it comes to crossing terrain. Of any kind. They’re also Indian British and there isn’t a country in the world where cars from own soil aren’t immensely popular. But let’s be honest, Land Rovers are also a bit boring. If they haven’t got their roof chopped off to fit a machine gun, they’re a bit for country mums and rich executives. Some, the ones with really big and really shiny wheels, are for drug dealers.
Many Land Rovers you can get with big engines. Very big indeed, but it takes companies like Overfinch to turn them into something truly sporty – for as much as you can call a 5,500 pound block of concrete sporty. But Overfinch also stick your car full of luxury rubbish such as Siamese-cat-leather upholstery, snakeskin shifter knobs and, not to forget, wheels the size of a truck. Pointless when you’re using it for what it’s supposed to do: barging off into the fields, climb hills, run through mud puddles and transport wet dogs. Nope, getting an Overfinch is like serving a 2006 Chateauneuf du Pape at a Heavy Metal festival.
There is something much better though: a Bowler, which is perhaps comparable to whiskey. Still not cheap, but it gives a good kick and brawlers love it. Bowler doesn’t fit kitty-cat leather, it fits roll cages and killer suspension, in tandem with a massive and noisy engine. Bowlers eat terrain like fat kids eat chips.
The company has been building them for over twenty years and only now did Land Rover decide it’s a good idea for the two to hold hands. The cooperation of the two was announced last week.
So, from now on a Bowler isn’t just a souped-up Land Rover, it’s “Powered by Land Rover”.
