This Is Jeremy Clarkson’s Vehicle Of Choice For The Apocalypse

Earlier today, Jeremy Clarkson took to the internet airwaves for some trivia questions on Drivetribe’s YouTube channel. We carried the hour-long pub quiz here at Motor1.com, though admittedly we started to lose some interest when, about 25 minutes in, a true/false question came up asking if hair and fingernails continue to grow after you die. Really? Yeah, really.

There were some entertaining moments that were classically Clarkson, one of which came at the 34-minute mark. While answering questions from viewers, the inevitable question of apocalypse vehicles came up. What would Clarkson drive in a post-apocalyptic world? Sorry, Mad Max fans – it won’t be a V8 interceptor. Rather surprisingly, he dips into the world of Richard Hammond and chooses not a matte-black semi-truck, or an armored-up Audi, or even a Porsche 928 fitted with an oddly offensive license plate of random letters and numbers.

Instead, he picked the Bowler Wildcat.

You remember the Wildcat, right? No motoring fan could forget a young Richard Hammond bashing through the dirt in a Wildcat during the very early years of Clarkson-era Top Gear, proclaiming himself as a driving god. That was likely the first time many of you learned about the Wildcat – it was only in limited production for just a few years prior to that feature, but it endures as a legendary road-legal off-roader having both the speed and chops to compete successfully in Baja and Dakar.

Come to think of it, the Wildcat would be epic for conquering the desolate wastelands of a post-apocalyptic world. At least, until the 5.0-liter V8 engine runs out of gas.

These days, Bowler is officially part of Jaguar Land Rover, having been acquired by the automaker in December 2019. Bowler already had a close relationship with Land Rover, and while nothing new has yet come of the merger, Bowler is still operating from its headquarters in Belper, Derbyshire.