The Hong Kong Police Explosive Ordnance Disposal Bureau's three-axle Defender 130, AM 6788: a 6×6 crew cab carrying a tall white box body in the force's white livery with red wings, a red waist band edged in blue, bilingual POLICE and BOMB DISPOSAL lettering, a bonnet spare, a roof rack and a red-and-blue bar over the cab.
BASE VEHICLEDefender 130 Hi-CapBUILT BYLand Rover (Defender 130 donor); six-wheel conversion by an unrecorded converterIN SERVICE2010OPERATED INHong KongPRODUCTIONUnknownLAYOUT6 wheels · 130″
The record
The Explosive Ordnance Disposal Bureau is the Hong Kong Police Force's bomb squad: set up in 1972 with British Army expertise, wholly staffed by Hong Kong officers from 1993, and today a stand-alone unit of the Operations and Support Wing that deals with everything from wartime ordnance dug up on building sites to improvised devices, underwater disposal and chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear incidents, as well as training the rest of the force and inspecting explosives stores. Its vehicles have to carry a great deal — protective suits, robots, tools, containment equipment — which is how a Land Rover came to be stretched to three axles.
AM 6788 is that vehicle: a Defender 130 converted to six-wheel drive with a driven bogie of two rear axles, retaining the four-door crew cab and carrying behind it a box body wider and taller than the cab, with a roof rack above it. It wears the force's standard livery of the period — white with red front wings and a red band edged in blue along the waist — with 警 POLICE 察 on the cab doors and the box side, BOMB DISPOSAL and 爆炸品處理 lettered beneath, a mirrored POLICE on the bonnet for the benefit of rear-view mirrors, a spare wheel on the bonnet, a winch in the front bumper, blue lamps at the bumper ends, a red-and-blue light bar and an air-conditioning pod on the cab roof, and the unit's '4 EOD' callsign plate on the bumper. The reference photograph was taken by Daryl Chapman on a Hong Kong highway on 9 September 2010. Who carried out the six-wheel conversion, and whether the Bureau ran more than one such vehicle, is not stated in the sources consulted.
Specification
MANUFACTURERLand Rover (Defender 130 donor); six-wheel conversion by an unrecorded converter
MANUFACTUREDDefender 130; photographed in service September 2010, build date not recorded
ENGINENot recorded in the source (Defender 130 Td5 or Puma era by appearance)
PRODUCTION RUNUnknown — one vehicle documented
COUNTRY OF ORIGINUnited Kingdom
OPERATED INHong Kong
STATUSunknown
REGISTRATIONAM 6788 (Hong Kong Government AM series); callsign plate 4 EOD
DRIVELINE6×6 conversion of a Defender 130 crew cab with twin driven rear axles
BODYCrew cab with separate box body and roof rack; front bumper winch
RECORD KINDNamed model
MODEL LINEDefender
WHEELS6
NOMINAL WHEELBASE130″
CATEGORYSpecial · Police
Catalogue fields describe the vehicle's structure and body as this registry records it. They are not certified factory measurements, and no performance figures are published here.
Renders & references
Front three-quarterRegistry renderThree-quarterRegistry renderSideRegistry renderRearRegistry renderFrontRegistry renderAM 6788 on a Hong Kong highway, 9 September 2010 — the reference this model was built from; linked only, all rights reserved.Daryl Chapman Photography ↗
Where it was
HK Hong Kong2005–2026 · Hong Kong Police EOD Bureau, AM 6788
BasedHong Kong Police EOD BureauHong Kong · 2005–202622.35, 114.19