The original (some might say “classic”) Land Rover Defender just won’t go away. Or at least the shape won’t.
The British company has just granted off-road competition specialist Bowler permission to use the 110 station wagon body shape on a new high-performance model, codenamed CSP 575.
This is not as magnanimous as it seems.
Land Rover’s Special Vehicle Operations has owned Bowler since 2019, so it’s really just telling itself that it’s okay to use something it already owns. A subsidiary within a subsidiary does at least give some distance for the project, for a company that was very keen to put big a full stop after the classic Defender when it ceased production back in 2016.
CSP 575 paves the way for a new family of high-performance off-road models. It will also use Land Rover’s 5.0-litre supercharged V8 (575ps, hence the name), although the vehicle will be based around a high-strength steel chassis unique to Bowler.
The new model has been revealed in renders only for now, but Bowler is promising more details next year. It’ll be available in the UK and Europe only in “limited numbers” says the company, at an indicative price of NZ$388,000. So it’s not for the faint-hearted in so many ways.