The record
The requirement for a new battlefield ambulance was announced in February 1992, alongside the tenders that produced the Wolf utility fleet. Land Rover won the design project — known as Project Pulse — with a version of the ultra-long-wheelbase Defender 130 (approximately 127 in / 3,225 mm wheelbase), and the production contract was placed on 18 January 1996, the same day as the ~8,000-vehicle Wolf order. Around 800 ambulances were built, entering service from 1997 as the 'Ambulance 4x4 4-Stretcher'; enthusiasts and the surplus trade call them Pulse or Wolf 130 ambulances. Strictly the Pulse was a separate development from the Wolf 90 and 110, but it shares the strengthened XD chassis engineering, 300 Tdi drivetrain and Defender front bodywork, so the 'Wolf Ambulance' label has stuck.
The insulated, heated box body was designed and built by Marshall of Cambridge (Marshall Aerospace), continuing that company's decades-long line of Land Rover military ambulance conversions. The body carries four stretcher cases, six seated (ambulant) patients, or two stretchers plus three seated, in addition to the driver and medic, with a rear step, stretcher racks, interior lighting and heater. Some examples were waterproofed for amphibious deployment with 3 Commando Brigade.
The fleet served on operations from the Balkans and Sierra Leone to Iraq and Afghanistan — and in the 2014 Ebola response in Sierra Leone (Operation Gritrock) — comfortably exceeding its specified 15-year service life, with several hundred still operational more than two decades after introduction. As heavier protected ambulances took over front-line casualty evacuation, surplus Pulse 130s were sold into preservation and civilian use, and some redundant chassis were rebuilt as Defender 130 double-cab pick-ups and mortar carriers under Project HEBE.
