Member Since: 12 May 2012
Location: Scotland
Posts: 4350
Good news for the Bowler staff being kept in jobs and most importantly not loosing their skill set.
Hopefully JLR don’t deviate their raw cars too much MY14 Kahn Converted Dynamic - Fuji White Ebony/Pimento Interior
MY15 Xenon Headlight Conversion
MY17 RRS SVR - Estoril Blue Cirrus/Ebony 🪣💺’s
19th Dec 2019 9:42 am
RealBeale
Member Since: 13 Jun 2016
Location: Birmingham Great Barr
Posts: 911
IMHO I reckon this is the end of Bowler as we know it. Bowler, or at least Drew's legacy of building world class competition vehicles, will no longer exist as such. It'll just be a subsidiary brand of JLR in the way SVR is.
Never again will we see the likes of the Tomcat , Wildcat , Nemesis , EXR-S and Bulldog type vehicles being produced under the Bowler name. It'll be current range JLR vehicles with a little Bowler badge and hefty price tag.
JLR have no interest in producing small volume Rally Raid type vehicles. By buying Bowler, they can ensure that they can exploit the knowledge and experience of building proven off road/competition vehicles gained over 30+ years, then slowly let the Bowler racing legacy disappear into the ether.
And maybe, just maybe, some of that knowledge and experience will trickle down in to JLR's products and make them more robust, and less "SUV" and put them on top again as the world's number one 4x4 brand. However, I doubt it........yeah, they'll just use the Bowler name to hike up the price of their "lifestyle" vehicles.
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Footnote: The Bulldog has an independent suspension set-up, much like the New Defender. I remember saying when everyone in the magazines were complaining that the ND would not have beam axles , that the Bulldog had independent suspension and that if Bowler reckoned that was the way to go, then JLR were right to go with it too.
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18th Dec 2019 1:06 pm
maybe 
