MY FEEDLY

The Bowler Wildcat: A Street-Legal Off-Road Racer

The Bowler Wildcat looks like what might happen if you injected a standard Land Rover Defender with six pints of horse steroids and left it alone in a weights room for three months.

The fact of the matter is that there are relatively few Defender components used in the Wildcat, it has a totally new space frame chassis, heavy duty off-road racing suspension, and this example has a highly-tuned Rover V8 capable of over 330 hp.

Fast Facts – The Bowler Wildcat

The Bowler Wildcat was released in 1998 and sold until 2007 when it was replaced by the Bowler Nemesis.
The Wildcat has a steel spaceframe chassis, each chassis took three weeks to weld, it has a fiberglass body, custom suspension with Land Rover Defender live axles front and rear, and it could be specified with either a V8 or turbo diesel engine options.
Wildcats have been raced extensively in events like the Dakar Rally, Baja de France, Baja Great Britain, the Scottish Hill Rally, and the original American Baja races.
Unlike many of their competitors, the Bowler Wildcat is 100% street legal and can be driven daily if you don’t mind the lack of comfort features.

Drew Bowler and Bowler Offroad

Drew Bowler sounded Bowler Offroad back in the mid-1980s due to popular demand after his successes with a Land Rover Series 1 that he had modified extensively for off-road competition.

Above Video: This is the original Top Gear feature on the Bowler Wildcat from 2003 featuring Richard Hammond.

From 1985 he started taking orders for vehicles similar to his own, launching the company with eight employees on the Bowler family farm in Derbyshire, England. The company’s first full-custom vehicle was the Bowler Tomcat, which was then evolved into the Bowler Wildcat.

The company grew to become an off-road manufacturing juggernaut, with some of their vehicles being used for military purposes and others being used in the development of automated off-rad driving systems by BAE Systems and the Mobile Robotics Group at Oxford University.

Drew Bowler died suddenly in 2016 sending shockwaves through the company and through the off-road racing community at large. The company survived and continued with its development and manufacturing work, then in 2019 Bowler Offroad was acquired by Jaguar Land Rover, becoming an independent wing of the company’s Special Vehicle Operations division.

Recently the company announced Project CSP 575, a highly advanced descendent of the original Land Rover Defender with a 575 hp V8.

The Bowler Wildcat

When it was introduced in 1998 the Bowler Wildcat represented a major evolutionary advance over the previous Bowler Tomcat. The Wildcat was built for international level off-road racing with a steel space frame chassis with a 106″ wheelbase, heavy duty suspensions lightweight fiberglass body, and your choice of either a V8 or turbodiesel engine.

Despite the visual similarity to the Land Rover Defender, very few parts are actually shared between the two vehicles.

The Wildcat arguably would become the most famous creation from Bowler thanks to the extensive media coverage the model received, including a feature on UK television show Top Gear by Richard Hammond.

Wildcats would compete in off-road races around the world including the Dakar Rally, Rallye des Pharaons, Baja de France, Baja Great Britain, the Scottish Hill Rally, and the British Hill Climb Championship to name just a few.

The Wildcat was fitted with strengthened Land Rover Defender axles and an entirely new suspension arrangement consisting of coil springs, telescopic shock absorbers, radius rods, and a Panhard rod up front with coil springs, telescopic shock absorbers, trailing arms, and a Watt’s linkage in the rear.

When it was in production buyers could opt for 4, 4.6 or 5 litre displacement Rover V8 engines with a number of different tuning options offering varying power figures. It was also possible to opt for a 2.2 or 2.5 liter turbodiesel engine.

Bowler kept the Wildcat in production from 1998 until 2007 when it was replaced with the Bowler Nemesis. Many (if not most) Wildcats have been kept in operational condition, with the rights to the design having been sold to QT Services in 2007 (now known as Wildcat Automotive) to ensure a reliable supply of spare parts.

The Bowler Wildcat Shown Here

The Wildcat 200 you see here is powered by the most powerful engine that was originally offered, the 5.0 liter Rover V8. In its current state of tune this engine is producing 334 hp at 5,000 rpm with a dyno sheet to prove it.

This Wildcat is powered by a highly modified Rover V8 producing 334 hp.

The engine was rebuilt by specialists John Eales of J.E. Developments, a new differential and brakes were also added along with a full repaint.

This Wildcat 200 was first registered to off-road rally driver Hugh Haines in May 2001. Haines raced both locally and internationally, claiming multiple race wins including victories in the 2006 Baja de France, 2006 Baja Great Britain, and the Scottish Hill Rally.

This vehicle was also a star feature at the 2005 Goodwood Festival of Speed and it was displayed around the United Kingdom.

The car is now being offered for sale with its UK V5C registration document, an MoT test certificate which expires in June 2022, two spare wheels and a file containing period rally participation documents together with Bowler paperwork, photographs, invoices and recent Dyno results.

If you’d like to read more about it or register to bid you can click here to visit the listing, it’s due to roll across the auction block with Historics Auctioneers on the 25th of September with a price guide of £60,000 – £68,000, which works out to approximately $82,700 – $93,800 USD.

Images courtesy of Historics Auctioneers

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Free Live Stream: The 2021 Goodwood Revival

The Goodwood Revival is one of the most important vintage motorsport events in the world, if not the most important outright.

Held annually at the historic Goodwood Circuit in Chichester in southern England, the Goodwood Revival celebrates the golden age of the 1950s and 1960s, with attendees all in period-correct attire, as they watch the period-correct cars and motorcycles competing on track.

Though functioning time machines may be some way off, events like the Revival do act as a time machine of sorts for those that attend. With tens of thousands of people all dressed in 50s and 60s costumes, surrounded by cars, motorcycles, buildings, and food of the same era, it’s an extraordinary experience when you walk through the gates.

Attending the Goodwood Revival can be an uncanny experience, like going back in time to the 1950s for the weekend.

The team at Goodwood provide a free livestream of the event covering the full weekend and all races, it’s professionally produced and it typically includes cameo appearances by some of the most important figures in motoring and motorsport history.

The racing is anything but processional – drivers are out on track competing hard for wins and accidents do happen, fortunately Goodwood has a team of marshals and safety personnel on standby – all dressed suitably for the event of course.

If you’d like to learn more about the Goodwood Revival you can click here to visit the official website. You click here to subscribe to the Goodwood YouTube Channel and never miss another event.

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The “Ferrari Of The East” – A Rare Melkus RS 1000 From East Germany

Known locally as the “Ferrari Of The East,” the Melkus RS 1000 is a sports car that was made behind the Iron Curtain in Soviet occupied East Germany from 1969 to 1979. Just 101 were built and it’s believed that approximately 80 remain roadworthy.

The Melkus RS 1000 was originally powered by a three-cylinder, liquid-cooled, two-stroke 992cc engine sourced from Wartburg, a fellow East German automaker. Power is sent to the rear wheels via a 5-speed transmission that was made by modifying a Wartburg 4-speed gearbox, and the running gear was largely sourced from the venerable Trabant and the Wartburg 353.

Fast Facts – The Melkus RS 1000

The Melkus RS 1000 is a fiberglass-bodied sports car made in Dresden in East Germany for 10 years from 1969 till 1979. They have steel ladder chassis and three-cylinder, two-stroke, one-liter engines producing approximately 68 hp at 4,500 rpm.
Just 101 of them were made and roughly 80 are thought to have survived.
The RS 1000 offered a top speed of 102 mph, a heady figure in the Soviet Union where regular vehicles like the Trabant had a top speed closer to 60 mph.
Melkus also built Formula 3, Formula Junior, and Formula Ford cars from 1959 until it ceased operations in 1986.

An Impossible Dream: The Ferrari Of The East

We don’t associate the Soviet Union with sports cars though a fair few were made over the years, all of which were unique in their own way and had to make do with a very limited supply of parts, materials, and engines.

Melkus was originally founded in 1959 by successful, multiple race winning driver (and driving school operator) Heinz Melkus in Dresden, East Germany to build single seat racing cars and road-going sports cars.

The Melkus RS 1000 has quintessentially ’60s styling with a Lotus-inspired fiberglass body on a steel chassis.

It was an ambitious project given the shortage of suitable supplies and expertise but against the odds he made it work, creating one of the most desirable sports cars available to people behind the Iron Curtain.

As the story goes, Heinz Melkus developed the RS 1000 in the 1960s after being overtaken by a Lotus when driving to Yugoslavia. Private businesses using resources to build luxury items like sports cars wasn’t generally permitted however East Germany was gearing up to celebrate its 20th anniversary and so government officials gave the project their approval, likely to they could use the cars to showcase East German industry.

Heinz Melkus and his small team did a remarkable job designing and building the RS 1000, they developed a steel ladder chassis and an aerodynamic fiberglass body, possibly inspired by that Lotus he’d seen on its way to Yugoslavia.

Components like engines, suspension, transmissions, and brakes were exceedingly hard to come by, the humble little Trabant passenger car had a 10 to 15 year wait from order to delivery largely due to limited supply and colossal demand for personal cars.

Some components for Melkus cars were sourced from junkyards and others from the Trabant and Wartburg factories. Interestingly the Melkus RS 1000 only had a wait time of only approximately two years, though the cars limited practicality, two seats, and high price tag meant it was only ever going to be accessible to a select few.

Production ran from the end of the 1960s until the end of the 1970s and the company would eventually fold in 1986 due to the dire economic situation in the Soviet Union.

The interior is relatively spartan, with two seats and a small central tunnel that accommodates the shifter and handbrake.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall Heinz Melkus started a BMW dealership in Dresden, and many years later in 2006 Heinz’s son Peter Melkus relaunched the company offering a new version of the car called the Melkus RS 2000.

The Melkus RS 1000

The Melkus RS 1000 is little-known outside of the former Soviet states, it’s a car that is obviously a child of the 1960s but at first sight people to struggle to place who manufactured it.

Melkus and his team created the most aerodynamic body they could without the use of a wind tunnel, with a Kammback design, a low nose, covered headlights, and gullwing doors. With the exception of the windscreen all the glass used in the car is flat for the sake of simplicity, and parts like rear vision mirrors, door handles, hinges, and indicators were all sourced from other automakers.

The steel ladder chassis was combined with a roll bar integrated into the windscreen frame, with another behind the seats for added protection. The RS 1000 rides on independent front and rear suspension with coil springs, and it uses drum brakes front and rear.

The mid-mounted engine is a three-cylinder unit taken from the Wartburg 353. The engine was rebuilt with a higher compression ratio and triple carburetors, giving 68 hp at 4,500 rpm and 87 lb ft of torque at 3,500 rpm, compared to the 55 hp of the engine used in the Wartburg 353.

In order to give the highest possible top speed a 5th gear was added to the Wartburg 353 four-speed gearbox, allowing the Melkus RS 1000 to reach 102 mph. The RS 1000 tips the scales at 720 kgs or 1,587 lbs thanks in large part to its lightweight fiberglass body, making it somewhat akin to the Lotus that inspired it.

The original 1.0 liter two-stroke, three-cylinder engine produces 68 hp, this upgraded 1.3 liter V6 engine makes 110 hp and can reach a top speed of 125 mph.

Production numbers just squeaked past 100, with 101 made in total. 80 of these are thought to survive to the modern day and they’re considered highly collectible in former Soviet states where they remain a local legend.

The Melkus RS 1000 Shown Here

The car you see here is a 1976 Melkus RS 1000 that is believed to be the only example powered by a 1.3 liter two-stroke Müller-Andernach V6 with triple Solex twin carburetors. It’s capable of 110 hp and 133 lb ft of torque, with power sent to the rear wheels via a five-speed gearbox with modified ratios.

Thanks to the larger engine the top speed of this RS 1000 is approximately 125 mph, and it’s finished in Ferrari Giallo Modena paintwork with a two-tone black and grey interior.

We almost never see these cars come up for auction so it’ll be interesting to see what this one goes for. It’s being sold now in a live auction (at the time of writing) on Collecting Cars, with 4 days remaining to bid.

If you’d like to read more about this Melkus or register to bid you can click here to visit the listing.

Images courtesy of Collecting Cars

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A Jet Age Citroën H Van By Barou: One Of A Kind Vintage Camper

This is a Citroën H Van as you’ve probably never seen it before, with a custom made coachbuilt body by French company Barou. It was specifically designed as a mobile office and home for a Mr Charlin, the owner of a company named Socome, based in Lyon that specialized in the supply of garage equipment.

The Citroën H van, or the Type H as it’s sometimes called, was by far the most advanced commercial van design of its era, despite its relatively antiquated looks. It made use of monocoque construction, it had four-wheel independent suspension, and a front wheel drive system that allowed it to have a very low, flat floor in the back ideal for carrying cargo.

Fast Facts – The Citroën H Van

The Citroën H Van was produced from 1947 until 1981 with very little in the way of updates, a remarkable 34 year production run.
Citroën made almost half a million of them in total, with the final number produced sitting at 473,289.
The van features an unusual corrugated steel body, a design chosen as the panels have more rigidity with little weight penalty, a critical feature as the van uses monocoque construction.
The Citroën H Van was developed into almost every type of vehicle imaginable, from simple delivery vans and trucks to ambulances, camper vans, horse transporters, mobile cafes and food vans, and even school busses.

Citroën H Van

The styling of the Citroën H Van stopped the motoring world in its tracks when it was first shown to the public at the 1947 Paris Motor Show, it used an unusual corrugated steel body design not dissimilar to the aircraft made by the German Junkers aircraft company, and unusually for the time it was front wheel drive.

A vintage advertisement for the Citroën H Van showing how it looked without the bespoke body.

When it comes to most things in life the French have their own peculiar style and this is nowhere more evident that in the world of car design – the Citroën 2CV, Citroën DS, and the earlier Citroën Traction all being key examples of this phenomena.

Citroën had developed a van called the Citroën TUB (Traction Utilitaire Basse) in 1939 which used many components from the Citroën Traction in order to keep production costs down. The TUB was essentially a box on wheels with a front wheel drive system and a low flat floor in the rear for cargo.

The production of TUB ceased during the German occupation of France, and the post-WWII Citroën H Van borrowed heavily from its predecessor, though the styling was notably different, particularly due to the aforementioned use of corrugated steel for the body.

Unusually for the time, the Citroën H Van was designed with monocoque construction rather than a standard body-on-frame design, this meant that the van was lighter and simpler to build than its contemporaries.

Another unusual feature was the use of front wheel drive, no commonplace on many vans it was unique back in the 1940s and it allowed the H Van to have a very low flat floor in the back with 6′ of headroom.

The driving position offers excellent visibility, with expansive windows surrounding the driver, even up in the roof.

The years immediately after WWII in Europe were characterized by the severe austerity measures that had been implemented after the war had almost bankrupted many of the nations involved.

This meant that the general populace had little money to spend on automobiles and so affordable vehicles like the Citroën 2CV and the Citroën H Van were the key to getting the country mobile again as the rebuilding effort began.

Citroën H Van Specifications

Citroën developed the H Van to use the same front wheel drive engine system as the pre-existing Citroën Traction, the headlights were sourced from the 2CV, and the gauges came from the Traction Avant.

When it was first released the H Van was powered by the Traction 1,911cc inline-four cylinder engine producing approximately 50 bhp at 3,800 rpm. The suspension, and 3-speed gearbox were also sourced from versions of the Traction, specifically the 11 and 15.

Braking was accomplished with hydraulic drum brakes on all four wheels and suspension consisted of torsion bars and shock absorbers. Steering was rack and pinion, and the cruising speed was 55 to 60+ mph depending on model.

The styling of the van is unmistakably 1950s Jet Age, with a French twist of course.

Over the course of its production run the exterior design of the H Van would differ little, however different petrol and some diesel engine options were offered. When ordering you could choose a van or pick-up truck, or alternatively could could get a powered rolling platform and have a unique body built by the coachbuilder of your choice.

When it was originally released it was simply named the H Van however the model series would include the H, HY, HZ, HX, and HW sub-designations over the course of the production run.

Today the unique styling and remarkable engineering of the H Van and its siblings have seen the surviving examples become highly collectible. Rust has been the primary killer of these vans, as with essentially all vehicles from this era, but it is still possible to find excellent examples.

One Of A Kind: The Citroën H Van By Barou

The van you see here looks nothing like the production H Vans produced by Citroën though it does use the exact same running gear.

There are perspex windows in the van at the front above the driver, a handy feature when driving in the Alps.

This vehicle started life as a powered platform from Citroën that was bought by a Mr Charlin and entrusted to French coachbuilder Jean Barou, based in Cournonsur-Rhône since 1940. Barou had survived the war years building trailers for bicycles, allowing people to haul cargo behind their bikes at a time when vehicles and fuel were in limited supply.

After the war he turned to both racing cars and more utilitarian vehicles like the example you see here. This H Van and its trailer was developed by Barou to be a rolling office and accommodation for Mr Charlin, that would allow him to travel around the country showcasing and selling his wares.

Barou and his team developed an entirely unique body that took ample styling cues from the jet age, with a prominent chrome grille ands bumpers, a wrap around wind screen with additional windows above the driver, an aircraft-like circlar window in the side entry door, and of course the matching trailer.

Now in need of a careful restoration this highly unusual piece of 1950s automotive design is due to cross the auction block on the 19th of September in France with a price guide of €40,000 – €60,000, which works out to $47,400 – 71,000 USD.

If you’d like to read more about this unique camper van or register to bid you can click here to visit the listing on Aguttes.