Jamie Oliver isn’t exactly a car guy, least of all when you compare him to other celebrity chefs like his all-time rival, his nemesis, Gordon Ramsay. Instead, the former Naked Chef likes to drive tractors and more practical, familiar vehicles. This also means that he is a long-time customer and friend of Jaguar Land Rover.
Somehow getting them both to work on a special project must have happened very organically. In 2017, Jaguar Land Rover and Jamie Oliver joined creative forces to create Jamie’s ‘dream car’, which is also one of the most impressive and inspiring custom vehicles and a hugely successful promotional car. Jamie called it his kitchen on wheels, and he was absolutely justified in doing so.
And it was the most fun, incredibly creative and well-equipped kitchen ever to hit UK roads. Luxurious, too. The Land Rover Jamie Oliver car was publicly unveiled in October 2017 as a one-off designed for promotional purposes, as a platform that would showcase the kind of work JLR did in its Special Vehicle Operations (SVO) department, where JLR customers can customize their new cars.
Photo: Jaguar Land Rover
The vehicle, which retailed at a reported price of £175,000 ($211,645 at current exchange rates), was featured in a 3-part series of specials available online on Jamie’s YouTube cooking channel and, until today , is considered the “most perfect” of combining advertising with the passion for cooking of the entire community of Oliver fans. This may seem like an exaggeration, but one look at the vehicle will confirm that it is accurate: this was great.
If you’re even going to create something out of the ordinary, you might as well go overboard, the SVO team must have thought when tasked with customizing a car for Jamie. He called for a rotisserie to be integrated into the Discovery’s grille and a drop-down table into the trunk, and also floated the idea of turning the wheels into butter churns. And what good is an armrest cooler in the car if you don’t also have a toaster? Or a coffee machine?
Both JLR and Jamie talked a lot at the time about how this unique vehicle was thought of as a kind of manifestation of a family car of the future, when family meals are no longer a concern. This part is marketing talk and it’s very obvious in all the promotional videos, which to a more trained eye come across as scripted, although they’re not offensively bad for that. That doesn’t change the fact that the car’s redesign and build were of exceptional quality and, most importantly, that everything was perfectly functional.
Up front, the Discovery featured an extendable 5.2-foot (1.5-meter) rotisserie for up to three medium-sized chickens, a turkey, a leg of lamb, or even a small piglet. Mounted behind the Land Rover badge, the rotisserie drew power from the engine, as did the pasta cutter that used the same mount. The rotisserie came with a 40-inch flat-screen TV with connectivity, in case Jamie’s family missed their must-have cooking entertainment during their outings.
Photo: Jaguar Land Rover
Inside the engine bay, the SVO team integrated a 4.7 liter slow cooker, because what’s life without one, right? There were also several surprises in the cabin, including a toaster next to the fridge, a special compartment for jam and chutney hidden in the dash, a portable coffee maker and a portable USB-charged vacuum on the passenger footwell. Jam and toast may be the breakfast of choice, but no one likes crumbs.
The real surprise was in the back, though. Here, SVO built an entire collapsible kitchen, including a two-burner gas stove and sink with running water, and a pull-out, sliding counter that doubles as a table. At the back door, they integrated separate vinegar and olive oil dispensers, reusing a couple of car trunks. A derailleur was made into a salt and pepper grinder, while a custom mortar and pestle was made to look like a piston.
On each side of the car and accessible through the rear windows was a herb garden and spice rack, while a secret compartment in the boot held Jamie’s hottest spices. Another big surprise were the butter churners on three of the wheels, as the fourth one held an ice cream maker.
Since no family outing is complete without a barbecue, Jamie’s car had one too. Made from the grille of a Discovery, it unfolded and sat on a folding metal table surrounded by a modified standard 25 liter (6.6 gallon) drum.
Photo: Jaguar Land Rover
The vehicle had a prominent LR-JO badge and, at least in the limited line kitchen series, a matching license plate. As the two videos available below show, all of the aforementioned features were fully functional, so Jamie’s enthusiasm to try them out is understandable, even if his A-list status means he’s probably used to things scandalous
Promotional vehicles are all about showing off. This one also helped JLR show off, but it did so in a way that pushed the envelope in terms of what you can make your car do. Many of today’s truckers are rather annoyingly proud to show off what their mobile homes can do, but let’s put it this way: none of them can hold a candle to the kitchen facilities of Jamie’s Discovery.
We have been unable to find any trace of the vehicle past 2017, but will update this story when and if we hear from JLR about its whereabouts.
