The record
Yorkshire farmer and adventurer Steve Burgess spent around a decade planning a Cape-to-Cape expedition - from Cape Town to Cape Horn the long way, driving north through Asia and crossing from Russia into Alaska - which required an overland vehicle that could also swim the Bering Strait. His 2007 Defender 110 (YK07 DTA, chassis SALLDHFF86A725527) was rebuilt from new for the job on a modified galvanised chassis, with a factory-fit 300Tdi 2.5-litre turbodiesel and five-speed manual in left-hand-drive rest-of-world specification.
Burgess's insight was that the fixed floats of the earlier SV Amphibious 90 forced a choice between sitting well in the water and keeping ground clearance on land, and that the float heights therefore had to be adjustable. Having met mostly scepticism from the boating world, he took the concept to Dan Evans - named on the development page as "Dan Evans of Evans UK" and on the team page as director of Protection and Performance Ltd, the firm he founded as Evans 4x4 in 2000, which builds bespoke 4x4 and off-road roll cages, prepares vehicles for racing, and which the team page credits with designing and building the winning vehicles in all classes of the British Off Road Championships. The expedition's own account records that over "some 15 months we calculated, made mock-ups, models and drawings", finishing with a propeller-driven Land Rover exceeding five knots on virtually its maiden voyage. Motorsport UK's tribute to Evans, who died on 26 September 2021, likewise records that he helped develop and build the amphibious Land Rover as well as crewing it.
The amphibious kit comprised outriggers carrying inflatable chambered pontoons, a PTO-driven hydraulic system spinning a phosphor-bronze propeller, a bow plate and rudder, plus a sunroof escape hatch. Expedition equipment included a Warn winch, external roll cage, 140-litre fuel tank and ARB differential locks, and bogie caterpillar tracks could be fitted for deep snow - also used on land in the Arctic stages.
Having already crossed Europe and the full width of Russia in winter, Burgess and Evans launched from Uelen, Russia's most easterly settlement, and in the early hours of 8 August 2008 completed the roughly 55-mile swim to Wales, Alaska - weathering a storm layover on Little Diomede island - to become the first team to take an amphibious road vehicle across the Bering Strait. The expedition's own team page credits Evans's onboard mechanical skills with the Land Rover surviving the crossing at all.
After the expedition Burgess kept the Defender in use on his farm. It was auctioned in 2025, bought by Liam FitzPatrick, and acquired later that year by the Dunsfold Collection, which preserves it with its pontoons, propeller equipment and track attachments.
