Bowler, the maker of some pretty insane rally raid cars based on Land Rover and Range Rover models, announced an official partnership with Land Rover. Bowler cars have always been using Land Rover powertrains. They’ve just put a label on it. From now on Bowler EXR rally car and EXR S road car will be sporting a ‘Powered by Land Rover’ badge.

In this partnership Land Rover will supply Bowler not only with powertrains, but also engineering, development and parts. The main focus is on the EXR rally car which is going to make Land Rover badge shine in the rally raid events around the world, but the EXR S road car – a road-going version of the rally car with some leather on the dash, will also benefit from it, because of the demand for it.

Both the EXR and EXR S use a modified version of the Range Rover Sport chassis, and both cars use modified versions of the 5.0-litre V8 engine used in Range Rover models.  The EXR uses a FIA-restricted naturally-aspirated 5.0-litre V8 engine, while the EXR S uses a 550bhp version of the supercharged 5.0-litre V8 which will provide supercar performance.

Bowler is now ready to take its game to the next level. They will be competing in this year’s Baja 1000 rally raid in Ukraine and Rally Reykjavik in Iceland, and next year in the Tuareg Rally in Morocco and Silk Way Rally in Russia.

They will also preview a new EXR S road car at the 2012 Goodwood FoS. That’s something to look forward to.