Bowler Wildcat

Bowler Wildcat
Bowler Wildcat
	Bowler Offroad / QT Services
Production	1998-2007
Body and chassis
Class	Rally vehicle
Layout	Front-engine, four-wheel-drive layout
Related	Land Rover Defender
Chronology
Predecessor	Bowler Tomcat
Successor	Bowler Nemesis

The Bowler Wildcat is an off-road vehicle originally made by

Bowler Offroad, it is an evolution of the Bowler Tomcat using some components from the Land Rover Defender

.

The initial version, Wildcat 100, had a tubular chassis with 100" wheelbase and used the same body style as the previous box-section chassis "Tomcat 100". The Wildcat 200 was an evolution of this having a completely new spaceframe (of 106" wheelbase) and fibreglass body panels.

The Wildcat has been entered in various off-road rally raids, most notably the Dakar Rally and Rallye des Pharaons.

The manufacturing rights to the Wildcat were sold by Bowler to Qt Services in December 2007, to provide support to existing Wildcat owners while Bowler concentrated on production of their newer vehicle, the Bowler Nemesis. Since then, QT Services have continued to support owners in competitive events and have made further developments to the vehicle.

In 2011,

remote weapon station

.

Design and construction

The Wildcat has a tubular space frame construction that incorporates a roll cage as an integral part of the frame structure. The body panels are made of fiberglass.

The suspension system uses

Watts linkage

.

Bowler originally offered the Wildcat with a choice of 4, 4.6 or 5 litre displacement

turbo diesel

.

An optional feature offered by Bowler was a lift device that could lift the vehicle past the lowest travel of the front and rear

suspension. The lift was intended to be used to assist in digging the vehicle out of the soft ground or to facilitate changing a wheel. The lift device consisted of a large steel plate on a hinged sub-frame attached to the underside of the vehicle frame between the front and rear axles. The lift was lowered by a hydraulic ram

that was controlled from inside the vehicle. The lift plate also served to protect the underside of the vehicle when raised.

Specification

Engine type: V8
Displacement: 4.6 L (281 in³)
Power: 221 ps (218 bhp / 163 kW)
Torque: 400 Nm (295 lb-ft)
Power/ liter: 48 ps (47 hp)
Power / weight: 121 ps (119 bhp) / t
Torque / weight: 219 Nm (162 lb-ft) / t
Transmission: 6-Speed

Research platform

Two Wildcats have been retrofitted by BAE Systems with fly-by-wire control systems, high-performance computing payloads and sensors for estimating the local terrain, including lidars and cameras. The first of which is used by the BAE Systems Advanced Technology Centre as part of their autonomous systems research.^[2] The second is used by the Mobile Robotics Group at Oxford University as part of their ongoing research into lifelong infrastructure-free navigation for autonomous vehicles.^[3]