Which leads us on to perhaps Bashers’ most famous expedition: the Darien Gap.
The Pan American highway had transformed trade and travel between North, Central and South America. The highway ran seamlessly until it reached Panama, where it came to an abrupt halt at a notorious jungle crossing known as the Darien Gap. This hostile, steamy jungle had defeated engineers, who were unable to find a way through the impenetrable swamp between Panama and Colombia.
In the late 1950s, several expeditions were mounted by international teams in an attempt to cross the gap, and in 1971 Blashers seized the opportunity. He asked his engineering chief if he thought it was a good idea for him to go. For the army, these were the twilight years between conflicts, and the military were looking for opportunities for adventurous training. The Darien Gap project would be a perfect combination of technical problem-solving, engineering, mechanics and jungle training.
Blashers sent an Irishman on a recce of the jungle, during which he nearly died, but he reported back to the Colonel that, with enough time, men and resources, the crossing would be possible. So the Royal Engineers were enlisted, along with a small army of scientists, zoologists, botanists, geologists and anthropologists. Now all they needed was a vehicle.
By now Land Rover had built their luxury car, the Range Rover, which they were preparing to launch onto the market. They saw the Darien Gap project as the perfect platform for doing just that, and to prove its off-roading credentials at the same time. It was a brave marketing move – and certainly a gamble.
Two brand-new Range Rovers were supplied by Land Rover, and were carefully driven from Alaska to Panama, where the jungle expedition would begin. The team had 100 days to cover 250 miles of virgin jungle.
‘The problem was the Range Rovers had very powerful engines,’ explained Blashers, ‘but the ground was unseasonably wet, turning it into a muddy quagmire, so the torque of the engines ground the wheels into the mud where they stuck.’ After that, the differentials on the Range Rovers exploded – 12 of them – before Land Rover began to panic and sent out their own engineers.
Meanwhile, it became apparent to Blashers that what they needed was a Land Rover; not a poncy Range Rover, but a lightweight Series Land Rover to help clear the way ahead of the two heavier vehicles. A runner was dispatched back to Panama City where they purchased on old Series II for $100, which was duly delivered by helicopter to the middle of the Darien Gap to join the expedition. It was named the Pathfinder – and without the electrics of the Range Rovers and with its lightweight body, it performed effortlessly.
However, Blashers needed more men. ‘I hired 100 murderers and rapists from the local prison in El Real,’ he explained matter-of-factly. ‘I swapped them for a case of Scotch whisky and the promise that I would release them in Colombia.’
The press had found the idea of the expedition intoxicating – it was a tale that combined old-school exploration with modern motor vehicles. The Daily Telegraph had dispatched their own reporter to cover the expedition, and he confided in Blashers that he wasn’t sure if he was covering an expedition or a disaster.
Eventually the team made it through – but not without losses. Dozens of men died during the expedition, but the biggest casualty came when a group of soldiers was ambushed while attempting to join them from the Colombian side. A dozen were shot and killed by warring locals. This was a hostile country at a hostile time.
The surviving explorers were much feted at a celebratory march in Medellín, in Colombia, where they laid a wreath at the statue of the city’s liberator, Simón Bolívar. The expedition was deemed a success and Land Rover had saved face. The Range Rovers returned to the UK where Blashers was asked to drive them around the country as a form of marketing for Land Rover – the Series II Pathfinder, however, was sold in Colombia.
‘They offered to sell the Range Rovers to me at a discount,’ recalls Blashers. ‘But I couldn’t afford the fuel, so I got a Volvo instead.’
The Land Rover had cemented itself as the car that could go anywhere. It had become an indispensable necessity for modern-day explorers, and the images of these cars ploughing their way through these gruelling expeditions captured the nation’s imagination. The vehicle’s ability to traverse the world’s most inhospitable landscapes also helped secure it one of the most incredible statistics: it has been said that for more than half the world’s population, the Land Rover was the very first vehicle they ever saw.
However, with the hallowed days of the great explorations now becoming history, and with explorations becoming fewer and fewer, Land Rover sought other forums in which to test the versatility and endurance abilities of their cars. The Land Rover was about to make its metamorphosis from simple workhorse to high-tech rally car. The world of competitive endurance rally racing was really taking off, and it was only a matter of time before the Land Rover came of age.
In 1970, Derbyshireman Drew Bowler decided he wanted to have a go at rally driving. He didn’t have any money to buy a car so he looked around the farm and found an old Series I Land Rover. He fitted it with roll bars and a new engine and thus was born the Land Rover Bowler.
As rallying really started to take off in the UK throughout the 1970s and 80s, Drew became more and more shrewd when it came to his interpretation of the rules. While most drivers were competing in ‘off the line’ vehicles, Bowler was busy adapting and transforming existing vehicles into something unique. Thus he was arguably one of the pioneers in the Land Rover modification cottage industry that had cropped up around the country. Most significant in his designs was the fact that Drew realised he didn’t have to use the Land Rover chassis; by changing it he could alter a farm vehicle into something capable of taking on the Paris Dakar Rally.
The Tom Cat was the first Bowler production Land Rover, but it was soon followed by the Wild Cat. Both vehicles bear a striking similarity to the Land Rover Defender and Series, but radical plastic surgery had been done to her body, as well as an overhaul of her internal organs.
The world of Rally Racing exploded. The Paris Dakar was seen as the pinnacle of this circuit, the race making plenty of headlines around the world with its tales of derring-do as modern-day adventurers took to Mad Max vehicles to race across the deserts of West Africa.
Current price tags for an individual to take part in a fully supported race car run upwards of a million dollars, and while there are still plenty of wealthy hedge fund managers willing to part with that kind of cash, Drew realised there was a market for those enthusiasts who sat somewhere in between. At the lowest end, in particular, were the maverick home engineers who built cars in their spare time in their garages, and Drew saw this as an untapped market of people keen to enter the world of endurance rally racing.
The Rally Raid, a series of 600-mile-plus endurance races across Europe, was the perfect fit for his Land Rover and these wannabe racers. Cars needed to be equipped to travel distances of up to 375 miles unassisted, which entailed carrying massive 88-gallon fuel tanks weighing upwards of half a ton. This necessitated stronger suspension, which in turn required a stronger chassis.
The Wild Cat was essentially a Land Rover on steroids – 40 per cent Defender, the rest handmade. Drew created the greatest rally car on the market.
While other marques had official rally car divisions racing under their brand, Land Rover never had such a dedicated department. Instead, under an informal agreement, Bowler become the official Land Rover rally car and the development of the Bowler came about with full design assistance of Land Rover.
Drew Bowler had tapped into a market where enthusiasts would be prepared to spend £100,000 on a race-ready rally car, and he soon had upwards of a dozen competing in the famous Dakar Rally. However, Bowler’s market was restricted to the UK. ‘Elsewhere in Europe