Range Rover Turbo Diesel ‘Beaver Bullet’ – inspired by a poor Top Gear review

The Range Rover Turbo Diesel ‘Beaver Bullet’ is a Range Rover created to fight back against a poor review on ‘Old’ Top Gear.

Younger readers will only remember ‘New’ Top Gear with Messrs Clarkson Hammond and May (and the ‘New New’ Top Gear with Matt LeBlanc et al), but there was Top Gear life before.

In the early days of Top Gear, things were a little more serious, with little of the personality cult the later shows have played on (although the likes of Angela Rippon and Noel Edmonds were hosts). But Top Gear still had big influence.

One Thursday evening in 1986 (for Top Gear was on TV on Thursdays in those day (miss it and that was it too) presenter Chris Goffey tested Land Rover’s new diesel Range Rover, in the days when diesel engines in road cars were not for the likes of a Range Rover, and he was brutal.

He was right to disparage the 2.4 litre diesel Range Rover, especially as the only other Rangie was powered by a V8 petrol, but in those days Land Rover weren’t exactly on the ball and had delivered the car to TG without special preparation. Big mistake.

But the team at Land Rover decided to fight back, and they built a couple of ‘Beaver Bullet’ Range Rovers complete with the diesel engine but with racing fuel filters, a roll cage and devoid of back seats, and set out to break some diesel car records.

Over three days at MIRA the Beaver Bullet was the first diesel car to maintain an average of over 100mph for 24 hours, and over that three days it went on to break 27 world records for diesel cars.

The Beaver Bullet certainly proved a point, and the VM-powered Range Rover went on to be a proper sales success for Land Rover and, even though things are now changing, was the prelude to diesel’s domination in Land Rovers.

If you want to see the Range Rover which made diesel engines palatable for Land Rover buyers, you can see it at Land Rover Legends’ ‘Star Cars’ at Bicester Heritage in May.