I am exploring the idea of building a heavily custom discovery to participate in competitions such as the Western Austrailian Rally next year and the Malaysian Rainforest challenge and I'd like to collect opinions on which way to go to get something that'll compete effectively with built jeeps, Defenders, and other hardcore vehicles.

My first thought is to go with a Discovery I, add 5.2L RPI blueprinted etc V-8 and build a custom high-speed winch modified off something like a trawler

If you had the chance to do this, what would YOU put in?

Standard or Automatic? Etc.