Rover's 100th Anniversary

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The Rover brand has always been at the heart of Britain’s motor industry, from 1904 to the present day. The products that bear the name Rover are quintessentially British, refined and timeless designs flourishing on innovative engineering.

Towards the end of the 19th century, the city of Coventry had become the capital of the British cycle industry. Foremost among many bicycle makers in the city was the Rover Company, which in 1884 had pioneered the modern safety bicycle, which enabled its makers to claim that ‘The Rover Set the Fashion to the World’.

The company had been founded in 1877 as a partnership between John Kemp Stanley and William Sutton. While Sutton soon pulled out of the business, Stanley was to remain at the helm until his death in 1901. As early as 1888, he built an experimental electrically powered tricycle.

However the Rover Company only entered into production of self-propelled vehicles in 1903, with the first Rover Imperial motorcycle, powered by a conventional petrol engine. In the following year, the first Rover car was introduced - the single cylinder 8 hp model designed by Edmund Lewis which had the first central backbone chassis in the world. A slightly smaller and cheaper 6 hp model of 1905 had a conventional chassis but featured an early example of rack and pinion steering. In the same year, Rover built its first four-cylinder cars, the 10/12 and 16/20 hp models, and in 1907 a 16/20 hp model driven by Earnest Courtis won the Tourist Trophy race in the Isle of Man.

Over the next few years, Rover made a wide variety of cars, including some models with the Knights sleeve-valve engine, but in 1912 two new cars were introduced to replace all the earlier models - a 3.3 litre 18 hp car and the better known 2.3 litre 12 hp model, designed by Owen Clegg, and which for many years formed the backbone of the Rover range. Cycle production continued, and Victor Louis Johnson won a gold medal on a Rover racer in the 1908 Olympic Games, while in 1911 a new 3.5 hp motorcycle was also introduced. Production of two-wheelers continued into the 1920s.

During the First World War, Rover supplied motorcycles to both the British and the Russian Armies, and the company built Maudslay trucks and Sunbeam cars to government orders.

In 1919, a revised 12, which soon became known as the 14, were put back on the market. In the same year, Rover bought a design for a small car produced by Jack Sangster of the Ariel Motorcycle Company. This became the Rover Eight, which was manufactured in a new factory at Tyseley in Birmingham.

The Eight had an air-cooled flat-twin engine, a type of power unit often associated with motorcycles or the contemporary flimsy cyclecars, but the small Rover was well made and sturdy. At one time it sold for as little as £145 and was deservedly popular in the market, until eclipsed by the four cylinder Austin Seven.

In 1924 Rover brought out a complementary four cylinder Nine, and began to move their products up-market, away from direct competition with the mass produced Austins and Morrises. In the same year, the 14/45 was launched - a technically interesting car with an overhead camshaft engine for which Rover for the first time was awarded the Dewar trophy, but a heavy and underpowered car, later fitted with a more powerful engine as the 16/50.

The next few years were difficult for the company. In 1928 the Nine was replaced by the somewhat undistinguished 10.25, which in various forms survived until 1933, and in the same year Rover introduced its first six cylinder model (apart from a prototype 3.5-litre car of 1923). The 1928 2-litre had an overhead valve engine and sold for £410 in tourer form. The Light Six of 1930 cost even less and used the same engine in a shorter chassis. One of these cars, with fabric covered bodywork, entered the history books by beating the famous Blue Train in a race across France. A longer chassis car with a 2.5 litre six cylinder engine of 1930 was christened the Meteor.

In 1931, Rover planned a complete departure from their existing range, with the rear engined Scarab - a small car designed to sell at £85. A prototype was displayed at the London Motor Show but the car did not go to into production. More significant for the future was another show debutante, the 1.4 litre Pilot with a fashionable small six cylinder engine and a freewheel in the transmission.

The Rover Company came under new management in 1933, with the Wilks brothers taking charge - Spencer as managing director, Maurice in charge of engineering and design. Between them they formulated a new product philosophy, which within a few years would make Rover “One of Britain’s Fine Cars”, with a discreet and understated image of typically British quality. For 1934 they introduced new 10 and 12 hp four cylinder models, while the six cylinder 14 was developed from the old Pilot. It was later followed by similar 16 and 20 hp models, which gave Rover extensive market coverage. Between 1933 and 1939, annual production increased from 5000 to 11.000 cars, and net profits soared from £7500 to £200,000.

From 1936 onwards, Rover participated in the government’s shadow factory scheme, building new factories at Acocks Green in Birmingham and at Solihull. With extensive war damage to the original Coventry factory, after 1945 Solihull became the main production site. During the war the company built aero engines and contributed to the early development of Sir Frank Whittle’s jet engine before this project was turned over to Rolls-Royce.

The early post-war range consisted of the 10, 12, 14 and 16 hp models, in saloon or sports saloon form, but in early 1948 Rover brought out their first proper post-war cars - a four cylinder 1.6 litre 60 and the 2.1 litre six cylinder 75, with all new engines featuring overhead inlet and side exhaust valves, in a new chassis with independent front suspension and hydro-mechanical brakes.

These cars were known as the P3 models. Rover built another experimental small car, the 700cc two-seater M1, and in 1948 also brought out the first Land Rover, with the engine from the 60 saloon in a four wheel drive chassis fitted with simple utility bodywork of aluminium: the start of the Land Rover brand.

At the 1949 Motor Show, Rover showed the new P4 model, at first only available in 75 form with the six cylinder engine. This had an all new body with full width styling in the American idiom, and for the first few years a very un-Rover like radiator grille with a centrally mounted fog lamp, which earned this model its “Cyclops” nickname. It was later replaced by a developed version of the original Rover grille, and the P4 range went on to become a much loved car, best known affectionately as the “Auntie” Rover, with a dignified and very British presence. The range was gradually extended with a choice of engines, ranging from a 2 litre four to a 2.6 litre six. When the P4 range finally bowed out in 1964, more than 130,000 of these cars had been built.

A P4 was the basis for the extraordinary JET 1 of 1950, the world’s first gas turbine engined car, inspired by Rover’s war time involvement with the jet engine. This car earned Rover the Dewar trophy for the second time and was driven at speeds over 150mph. Over the next few years Rover built several experimental gas turbine cars, including the T3 of 1956, a four-wheel drive coupe with a glass fibre body, the T4 of 1962 with front-wheel drive based on the as yet unannounced 2000 model, and finally, in co-operation with BRM, a racing car which competed in the Le Mans 24 hour race in 1963 and 1965, finishing tenth in the latter year at an average speed of over 100mph. Subsequently however the company gave up turbine development as the technology was not yet suitable for production cars.

A major step ahead for Rover came with the P5 model of 1958, a large luxury saloon with a 3-litre version of Rover’s six cylinder engine. It was the first Rover car with unitary bodywork, styled by David Bache. This model combined elegance with dignity, and had a traditionally well appointed interior. Later developments of the P5 included the more rakish coupe with a lowered roof line, and the 3.5-litre V8 model of 1967, which for the first time used the all aluminium V8 engine to a design brought from the American Buick company. The 3- and 3.5-litre models became favourites for transport of dignitaries, including British Prime Ministers from Harold Wilson to Margaret Thatcher, and HM The Queen used these cars for her private motoring.

In 1963, Rover entered a new market sector with the P6 2000 model. This was a compact and sporting saloon, which started the trend to the so called “executive” cars. It had an all new overhead camshaft four cylinder engine, an all disc brake system, and a deDion rear axle. It was the first British car to be fitted exclusively with radial tyres. Its advanced engineering and styling, coupled with traditional Rover values, earned it the accolade of Car of the Year, in the first year that this international award was made. Later on, the P6 range was extended with the V8 engined 3500 model, which put Rover on the map as a high-performance car. The last derivatives of the P6 were made in 1977, by which time the range had become the best-selling Rover ever with a total production in excess of 325,000.

The steady contraction of Britain’s motor industry in the post-war period would not leave Rover untouched. In 1965, Rover bought the small Alvis company of Coventry, maker of hand built luxury cars as well as military vehicles, and in the following year Rover was in turn bought by the expanding Lancashire based truck maker Leyland who already owned Standard Triumph. Then in 1968, the grand alliance of Britain’s motor industry was created when the Leyland group merged with Britain’s largest maker of popular cars, BMC, whose roster included Austin, Morris, MG and other makes, and which had previously allied itself with the Jaguar company. Within the Leyland hierarchy, Rover was eventually merged with Triumph (and, for a time, Jaguar) as a maker of upmarket specialist cars.

The P5 model was discontinued in 1973 without a successor - an even larger and more luxurious P8 prototype remained still-born, reputedly as it was thought to be too close competition for the Jaguar XJ6. Similarly, the mid-engined P6BS sports car did not go into production, but an important newcomer was the first Range Rover of 1970 with which Land Rover expanded their range of four wheel drive vehicles into the luxury sector.

The next new Rover car was the SD1 of 1976, which like the P6 before it took the Car of the Year title. Initially available only with the V8 engine as the 3500 model, the range was subsequently widened with four and six cylinder versions, as well as Rover’s first diesel engined car. The engineering of the SD1 was less adventurous than its P6 predecessor but its sleek five door fastback body gave it a unique market position in the executive class. The SD1 became a successful saloon racing car and with this car, Rover won their second TT race only 76 years after the first. A fuel injection engine was fitted to the Vitesse version, which became the fastest Rover production car.

Meanwhile, the parent company British Leyland had encountered financial difficulties, which in 1975 led to the effective nationalisation of the company. A programme of drastic restructuring was initiated by Michael Edwardes who became chairman in 1977. He initiated the link with the Japanese Honda company with selected Honda cars being built under licence - an example was the first Rover small car for many years, the first 200 series of 1984, which was also the first front-wheel drive Rover car. A programme of joint development was then started for a new executive car, project XX, which was introduced as the first Rover 800 in 1986.

This was also a front-wheel drive car, fitted either with a Honda V6 engine or Rover’s own new 16 valve 2 litre four cylinder engine, originally available only as a four door saloon but later joined by a five door hatchback which was offered as a high performance Vitesse model. In the same year that the 800 was introduced, Graham Day was appointed as chairman of BL.

He quickly renamed the company Rover Group and began a programme of moving the company and its products up-market, away from the mass market. He was also charged with completing a privatisation programme, which so far had seen many BL subsidiaries (including Jaguar) being sold. In 1988, this was finally accomplished with the sale of Rover Group to British Aerospace.

It was part of Day’s philosophy that henceforth, all new saloon models should be called Rover, with the MG badge being reserved for new sports cars, and the Land Rover brand being developed in the four-wheel drive sector, while of the many original other brand names inherited by the company, only Mini was retained for the company’s smallest product. There were also further joint product developments with Honda, including the new 200 series of 1989, which was fitted with the new 1.4 litre K series engine - a revolutionary design that earned Rover the Dewar trophy for the third time. The original five door 200 saloon was soon followed by a host of derivatives, including the booted four door 400 of 1990, while in the same year the K series engine was also fitted in the Rover Metro – a much developed version of the corporate best selling small car which later became the 100 series.

A return to more traditional brand values was signalled in 1992 when a new 800, for the first time since the demise of the P5 almost twenty years before, featured a version of the classic Rover radiator grille, and a luxurious coupe version was added to the range. In 1993, the gap in the middle of the Rover range was filled by the elegant 600, a 2.0-litre saloon which was manufactured together with the 800 models in a new facility at Cowley near Oxford, while production of the smaller Rover models was concentrated in the Longbridge factory in Birmingham.

After six years in the ownership of British Aerospace, in early 1994 the Rover Group was taken over by the German carmaker BMW. Under the new owner, Rover could begin to fulfil its potential, and 1995 saw two important new models. First the 400, a medium-sized car available in saloon and five door versions, and then at the end of the year, the new 200, a three or five door hatchback with a youthful appeal. Both featured versions of the well-established K series engine, and also Rover’s new much acclaimed L series diesel engine. In 1996, the ageing Honda V6 engine in the 800 series was replaced by Rover’s own new KV6 2.5-litre engine, pointing the way to future developments for the brand.

This came in 1998 when the Rover 75 was unveiled to the public at the Birmingham NEC motor show and on sale in June 1999. The year closed with successors to the 200 and 400 being launched the Rover 25 and 45. On 16th March, BMW Group announced fundamental ‘re-organisation plans’ that split the company apart and concluded in the Phoenix Consortium acquiring the then Rover Group business for the token £10 on 9th May 2000.

For the first time in many years the company found itself independent and debt free. The future focussed strongly on the Rover and MG brands, free to develop without constraint of partnership or ownership restrictions.

Under the new company MG Rover Group, the Rover 75 Tourer was launched in May 2001, followed by a variety of engine and derivative models in 2002 and by the Commerce, Streetwise and CityRover in 2003.

In 2004, Rover’s centenary year, revised versions of the 75, 45 and 25 modernised the range, with a fresh identity inside and out, that featuring specification and security improvements. A flagship Rover 75 V8, with larger prestige grille, was proudly launched at the Geneva Motor Show, with a Longbridge-built 75 Limousine, also featuring the large-grille treatment, the highlight of the Birmingham show.

A Century of Interest in Rover Cars

The background to Rover’s first car (6)

• The very first vehicle to carry the Rover name was the 1884 ‘Rover’ tricycle built by Starley and Sutton of Coventry. It caught on so well that other Starley and Sutton machines used the name and eventually the company became The Rover Cycle Company in 1896. So when the first Rover car appeared in 1904, the ‘brand’ had already been established for 20 years.
• One of the key technical features of the iconic 1885 Rover Safety Cycle was that it led the industry move from front wheel drive (Old Ordinary / ‘Penny-farthing’) to rear wheel drive. (Nearly 100 years later, the first Rover production car with front wheel drive was the 1984 Rover 200 series).
• Although Rover founder John Kemp Starley died in 1901, before Rover started producing motorised vehicles, he was obviously thinking along those lines. In 1888, when mechanically propelled vehicles still had to be preceded by a man with a red flag in Britain, he fitted battery-electric power to one of his tricycle models, a ‘Coventry Chair’ and took it to France to test it free of official constraints.
• J.K.Starley had another early involvement in selling and making motor cars. He was a director of the Grose Gear Case Company, formed in 1897 by his friend James Grose of Northampton, which sold various types of car, including Benz, Léon Bollée, Daimler and de Dion Bouton. In 1899 they built and sold a small number of their own Grose cars with Benz engines. The Rover Board agreed on 16 December 1903 to engage Edmund Lewis, until then chief engineer of the Daimler Company, to design their first car. Lewis is said to have already designed the first Rover motorcycle, launched in 1903, in his spare time.
• Rover continued to make pedal cycles and motorcycles alongside its cars for over 20 years.

Individuals that influenced Rover’s History (10)
John Kemp Starley or ‘J.K.S.’. John was a nephew of the ‘Father of the Coventry Cycle Industry’ James Starley, and himself a founder, in 1877 of Starley and Sutton, which led to the 1896 Rover Cycle Company. He established a company ethos of quality and individuality that was to play an important part in the future history of the car company that evolved from his original enterprise.

Owen Clegg, the ex-Wolseley engineer who became Rover’s works manager from 1910 to 1912, had a remarkable effect on the company in those brief two years. He was responsible for the very successful Rover 12hp, launched in the Autumn of 1911, and for setting up efficient new production techniques. His car and plant served Rover extremely well right into the 1920s.

Dudley Noble, who started at Rover in 1911 as a motorcycle tester and competition rider, became one of the British motor industry’s pioneering publicists. He arranged one of the first ever promotional films to be shot, in 1912, of Rover Motorcycle production and testing, ending with a sequence of him accidentally falling off his motorbike in the middle of Kenilworth ford! Many of his Rover publicity exercises, such as racing the Blue Train, passed into motoring legend.

Spencer Wilks became works manager of Rover in 1929, after being joint MD of Hillman. His training as a barrister honed his sharp a Strongly supported by his engineer brother Maurice, Spencer Wilks transformed the fortunes of the company, introducing a logical rationalised range with a finely-judged blend of engineering quality and good taste. His sure guiding hand enabled the company to build on this success right through into the 1960s, with the P6 as the ultimate achievement of the ‘Wilks era’.

Maurice Wilks, who began his industry career with General Motors in the US and had been a planning engineer at Hillman, came to Rover with his brother, to become a very ‘hands-on’ Chief Engineer. His first job was the radical air cooled, rear engined ‘Scarab’ prototype, but this was soon discarded in favour of a new drive for solidly engineered quality cars. Always a great enthusiast for new technology, he flew his own Westland Widgeon aircraft, and took naturally to the challenges of the aviation and automotive applications of gas turbines. After successfully heading Rover Engineering for many years, he became Chairman of Rover in 1962, but regrettably died a month before the launch of the P6 the following year.

Gordon Bashford. One of the longest-serving Rover engineers of all, Gordon Bashford began work in the Rover Drawing Office in 1930. He worked on the original Whittle/Rover gas turbine project, and was the leading concept engineer on all of the post-war Rover and Land Rover product designs from the 1948 P3 to the 1976 SD1. Before retiring in 1981, he worked with Spen King on advanced energy-conservation car technology, including all-aluminium bodyshells.

Spencer (Spen) King, a nephew of Spencer Wilks, first joined Rover from Rolls Royce in 1945 as a young gas turbine engineer, and was to be involved in all of the fascinating Rover turbine car projects, as well as in many tangential activities such as the Rover Special single seater race car and the Marauder tourer. He played a key role in the design and development of the P6, the Range Rover and the SD1. Enthusiasts still mourn the superb Rover P6BS mid-engined GT car prototype produced in the mid-1960s by Spen King and Gordon Bashford.

David Bache - trained as a designer during a student engineering apprenticeship at Austin, Longbridge, David Bache joined Rover as their first professional stylist in 1954. He updated the styling of the P4 for 1957, and his first complete design was the 1959 P5, 3-litre. He became better known for his work on the P6 and the SD1. All the designs of his team had remarkable longevity, as they had distinctive individuality while aligning with broad industry trends.

William Martin-Hurst, who became Rover’s managing director in 1962, was an extremely energetic and pragmatic leader who built successfully on the Wilks legacy. He encouraged many ground-breaking initiatives, such as the rallying programme and the Rover BRM Le Mans projects. He was personally responsible for the considerable coup of taking over the GM all-alloy V8 engine, which has served so well for nearly 40 years.

John Towers. With a background in Perkins, Varity and Massey Ferguson, John joined Rover Group in 1988, becoming Group Product Development Director in 1989, and Group Managing Director in 1991. He presided over one of the more successful periods of Rover history, during which a remarkable range of products was developed on very modest investment budgets. Unfortunately, this impetus was lost during BMW’s ownership of Rover Group, and John Towers returned in 2000 to grapple with yet another re-birth of the marque.

Rover’s surprisingly sporting history and major achievements (11)
Rover made use of competition success to promote its products from the earliest days. The Rover Safety cycle was used to set the world 50 and 100mile road records in 1885. In 1899, Rover was able to advertise 13 world records, 8 General UK records and 24 foreign records. Later, at the 1908 Olympic Games, Rover riders won all the single bicycle events.

When Edmund Lewis was developing and testing the prototype of the first Rover car, the 1904 8hp, he took canny advantage of competition events for proving and publicity. The very first public appearance was at the Midland Automobile Club’s Sun Rising Hill climb on 23rd July 1904. This gruelling test over the Edge Hill Escarpment on the Stratford-Banbury Road involves two right-angled bends with 1 in 6 gradients, and required two compulsory stops and restarts. The prototype Rover successfully climbed in 225 seconds beating all comparably-sized cars such as a 10hp Wolseley (282 seconds), a 6hp Wolseley (240 seconds) and a 7hp Star (249.8 seconds). Lewis also took his prototype to other events in 1904, such as sprints at Bexhill and Blackpool.

Continuing his policy of development through competition, Lewis took his 1905 16/20 Rover prototype, straight after its assembly in the workshop, to the July 1905 Brighton Motor Meeting where it won its class.

Two 16/20s were entered in the first Isle of Man Tourist Trophy race in autumn 1905, and the chief Rover test driver, Ernest Courtis, came 5th. In 1907 he won the TT outright in a 16/20. Rover then withdrew from four-wheeled racing until the 1960s, though Rover motorcycles took the team prize in the 1913 and 1914 TT events.

One of the best-known stunts by Rover publicist Dudley Noble was to race the French ‘Blue Train’ in 1930 using a new Light Six 2 litre Rover. The idea was to race the crack express from Calais to St Raphael on the Riviera, but the first attempt was foiled by fog. The second attempt, returning in the reverse direction, ended when the car crashed into a field after the driver misjudged a corner. But the damaged car was repaired and another South-North run succeeded, with the Rover arriving in Calais twenty minutes ahead of the train.

When the 2.5-litre six cylinder Meteor models were introduced in 1930, the Rover Service Depot in London built some special ‘Speed Meteor’ models. One lapped Brooklands at 92mph and owners had class wins at the Shelsley Walsh hill climb.

Between the wars, rallying was a popular activity, though not as demanding as it became after 1945. Nevertheless, Rover gained much positive publicity from events like the 1933 RAC Rally, where 14 Rovers finished without penalty and T.D. Weston’s Speed Twenty model won the over 16hp class.

In the 1960s, Rover entered their big, comfortable 3 litre saloons into some of world’s toughest ‘car-breaker’ rallies, achieving many surprising results - such as sixth place overall in the 1962 Spa-Sofia-Liege rally, and being class winner and one of only seven cars out of 84 starters to finish the 1963 East African Safari. In the 1963 Spa-Sofia-Liege a 3 litre again took the class win, with 8th place overall, while sixth place was achieved in the 1964 Acropolis Rally.

Rally driver Roger Clark kicked off his professional career by taking a near-standard single carburettor Rover 2000 to sixth place overall in the 1965 Monte Carlo Rally, winning its class and the Touring Car Category. Other notable results by the works Rover 2000 rally team included a class win and a third in the GT category of the 1965 Alpine Rally.

By far the most successful Rover competition car was the SD1, especially in fuel-injected Vitesse form. Racing wins with the 3500 began in 1980; the Vitesse dominated the British Saloon Car Championship in 1983 and 1984 as well as winning the European Touring Car Championship in 1986 after a near-win in 1985. Many successes in rallying included the 1983 and 1984 Scottish Rally Championships, won by privateer Ken Wood, and the Group A class win in the 1985 Shell Oils Open Championship by Tony Pond and Rob Arthur.

Company volunteers ran two very successful speed record runs with Rovers in the early 1990s. In 1990 a Rover Metro 1.4GTi took 21 Class F distance and time records, culminating in a 24-hour record of nearly 2912 miles at an average of 121.33 mph. Even higher speeds were clocked by the volunteers in 1992, with a Rover 220 Turbo Coupe, establishing 37 Class E records up to 3,322 miles in 24 hours, with maximum speed of 155.53 mph, and an average, including all refuelling stops, of 138.43 mph.

Tony Pond set a production car record for the Isle of Man TT course in June 1990, driving a largely standard Rover 827 Vitesse round in just 22 minutes 9.1 seconds – a record-breaking average of 102.195mph for a car.

Technical aspects of Rover (22)
The first Rover car, the 1904 8hp, had a cast aluminium backbone chassis structure, housing the engine, propshaft and rear axle. Aluminium castings were also used for the body framing.

During 1945-47, Rover developed a small car prototype called M1, which had an all-aluminium platform-based body structure, as a potential way of alleviating post-war steel shortages. Although the idea was not progressed to production, three examples were built and used as Rover company cars to gain high mileage experience.

Rover made considerable use of aluminium body panels over the years. The P4 saloon range from 1949 to 1964, used alloy bonnets, doors and boot lids for almost the entire production run, while the 1963-77 P6 range featured alloy bonnets and boot lids.

Variable camshaft timing is a modern feature, but the 1904 single-cylinder Rover 8hp had a foot pedal which operated a sliding cam mechanism, so that the inlet valve cam changed to a zero-lift profile, keeping the inlet valve closed, and the exhaust cam changed to a twin-peak profile. This turned the engine into a very effective compression brake. The same system was fitted to the four-cylinder Rover 16/20 in 1905.

The 1905 Rover 6hp had rack and pinion steering, as did the 1919 Rover 8hp, although it was not until 1976 that Rover returned to this type of steering mechanism with the SD1 3500.

The first four Rover cars designed by Edmund Lewis from 1904 onwards all had steering column-mounted gear levers. After this, only one manual transmission Rover ever followed suit, and this was the 1950-53 P4 75.

Rover took an early interest in diesel engines. They made arrangements for Dr Rudolph Diesel himself to visit them in Coventry in 1913, but when Rover employee Dudley Noble arrived in Harwich to collect Dr. Diesel from the mail boat, the famous engineer was reported missing, presumed lost overboard after embarking in Antwerp.

Rover’s first diesel engine came a little later than 1913 - in fact it was developed in the late 1940s, in the form of a V12 developing 470bhp. No, it wasn’t used in any car, it was a derivative of the ‘Meteor’ Tank engine, itself based on the 27-litre Rolls Royce Merlin aero engine. There was also a V8 ‘Meteorite’ 18-litre diesel derivative, producing 313bhp.

All of Rover’s motorcycles were air-cooled of course, but so was the 1919 Rover 8hp flat twin car. Rover nearly launched another air-cooled car in 1931, the ‘Scarab’, but withdrew it on establishing a new, more up-market product policy. The aborted 1931 Scarab had all independent suspension and a Vee-twin rear engine. Even Ferdinand Porsche, designer of the Volkswagen Beetle, came to Britain to test drive it.

It wasn’t a surprise when Rover began to fit a driver-controlled freewheel mechanism on their cars for the 1933 season, as such devices had been quite fashionable since the late 1920s. A freewheel, when ‘unlocked’ by the driver, allowed easy, quiet clutchless gear changing, and made it easy to save fuel by coasting. But it made great demands on the car’s engine refinement, braking and handling capabilities. The unusual thing is that Rover continued to fit freewheels successfully as standard right up until the 1956-59 period, only phasing them out as the various models were fitted with vacuum servo brakes. This was in case an engine stopped while freewheeling, thus losing manifold vacuum.

Rover announced independent front suspension (IFS) in some brochures for the 1935 Speed Fourteen models - a four seater open tourer and a four-door Streamline Coupe. However none of the Speed Fourteen production cars ever appeared to have been built with this feature, which seems to have been withdrawn at pre-production stage. IFS was incorporated instead in a next generation P3 model, delayed by war to 1948.

The 1948 P3 range introduced Rover’s unusual ‘inlet over exhaust’ or IoE engine design, which combined an overhead inlet valve and a side exhaust valve in each cylinder. Unlike other IoE designs such as those used by Rolls Royce and Coventry Climax, the side valve was angled to give a very efficient hemispherical combustion chamber with a central spark plug. The design gave excellent flexibility and tolerance of low-octane fuels, and was used in most of the 1949-64 P4 models and all the 3-litre P5 models.

During the 1950s, when automatic transmissions were gradually appearing on larger cars, Rover developed their own system, called ‘Roverdrive’, and fitted it to the 1956 105R model. It used a torque converter, a servo-operated clutch, a two speed conventional gearbox and an electric overdrive, all arranged to operate automatically. Despite its unusual configuration, it worked quite well.

The 1963 P6 2000 model was a rare beast in motor industry terms, in that it was an entirely new car with absolutely no carry-over of components from any previous model. It was an extremely brave gamble by a then quite small company, which paid off handsomely. The complete P6 range eventually outselling any previous Rover car range by a factor of at least 2.5, and transforming the company image.

Amongst the many technical novelties of the P6 was a base-unit structure with all external skin panels bolted on. The car was completely assembled and tested before fixing the panels on, thus giving exceptionally easy access for assembly work, and avoiding paint damage during build. This feature also made accident repair much easier.

P6 had a unique suspension design. At the front, the leading upper wishbones pivoted from the bulkhead and operated the bulkhead-mounted coil springs through pushrods, thus putting the loads into the strongest part of the structure. At the rear was a special Rover version of the de Dion axle design, with a sliding de Dion tube to allow the track to vary as the fixed-length drive shafts articulated. The resulting ride and handling capability was rated as world-leading.

Although considered by many to be a much simpler design than the P6, the 1976 SD1 that replaced it had many hidden technical subtleties. The torque tube rear axle suspension, for example, was patented for its clever geometry and packaging. It gave excellent longitudinal compliance, benign handling and a safe forward location for the fuel tank, amongst other benefits.

The use of self-levelling rear dampers on the SD1 was new to the UK, allowing the use of constant rate springs for comfort while maintaining correct ride height and attitude under varying load, but without the weight and complication of previous engine-powered levelling systems.

The Rover 800, launched in 1986, was ahead of the field in having 4-valve per cylinder engines across the range. When the 2.7-litre V6 models were launched in 1988, they led an industry trend to variable-length induction manifolding to optimise torque characteristics.

The current Rover 75 was designed using some of the world’s most advanced real-time virtual engineering techniques, which Rover had been developing well before the BMW takeover. These powerful computer-based concurrent engineering and simulation facilities allow rapid creation and ‘on screen’ testing and analysis of designs, thus radically reducing the time and cost of physical prototype testing.

Today’s Rover 75 was the first Rover to have a full multiplex electronic system, covering all of the powertrain management and body systems electronics. It allows very sophisticated interaction between all of the advanced control systems in the car, such as 500,000 bits per second communication between the engine management, anti lock braking/traction control and automatic transmission programming.

‘Jet’ engine developments (12)
Rover was selected by the UK Air Ministry to work with Frank Whittle’s Power Jets Company to develop and make Britain’s first gas turbine jet engines for aircraft. Between 1940 and 1943, Rover engineers grappled with this entirely new technology, developing both Whittle’s reverse-flow concept and their own straight-through version of it. Whittle was unhappy about Rover’s ‘deviation’ from his design, but history proved Rover right. In mid-1943, in an amicable arrangement, Rover transferred the jet engine work to Rolls Royce in exchange for an important tank engine project.

In 1945, Rover started to investigate the possibilities of small gas turbine units for road transport and other applications. They secretly put together the elements of the world’s very first gas turbine car in 1948/49, basing it on the then equally secret P4 Rover 75 saloon, cut down into an open three-seater, with the turbine mid-mounted. The normal piston-engined P4 was revealed at the October 1949 London Motor Show, while “JET 1”, as it was later registered, became public knowledge in March 1950.

The ‘JET’ name caused some misunderstanding; none of the turbine cars used direct jet thrust like an aircraft does - that would be totally impractical - instead a power turbine provided drive to the wheels in the usual manner.

JET 1 was one of the very first cars to have disc brakes, fitted in 1952, and needed especially because the turbine gave no engine braking. Special high temperature brake fluid also had to be developed for this unique car.

After carrying out a technical appraisal of JET 1, the RAC awarded the coveted Dewar Trophy to Rover in 1951 for the most outstanding technical achievement of 1950.

Following significant development of JET 1’s turbine, and with an updated and more streamlined front end, the car was taken to the Jabbeke motorway near Ostend in 1952 to set the first speed records for gas turbine cars, with the highest speed record being 151.965mph over the flying kilometre, driven by Spen King. The car was still accelerating at 152mph, but the road wasn’t long enough.

Two more versions of a P4 saloon based experimental turbine car were built, first front engined, then with a rear -mounted turbine. Unlike the other turbine cars, these derivatives were never shown to the world at large, and nothing was kept for posterity.

For the 1956 Earl’s Court Motor Show, Rover engineers Spen King and Gordon Bashford designed and built the T3 Coupe. This had four-wheel drive, with a clever variable-track de Dion rear axle, above which was positioned the 100bhp 2S/100 turbine engine. Other technical novelties included a glass-fibre body. T3 was used for extensive road trials, playing a key role in the development of heat exchangers to reduce the fuel consumption.

The last experimental Rover Turbine road car, and the one closest to production practicality, was the T4 of 1961. This used the basic structure of the still-secret ‘P6’ Rover 2000, but with a longer nose, front wheel drive and a unique independent rear suspension designed to accommodate a large central exhaust duct.

One of the publicity exercises carried out by T4 was to give a demonstration lap of the Le Mans circuit just before the 1962 race. One thing led to another, and towards the end of 1962, Rover had a joint project under way with the BRM Grand Prix team to run a gas turbine racecar at Le Mans in 1963. Although only giving a ‘demonstration’, the Rover-BRM car, driven by Graham Hill and Richie Ginther, ran perfectly to cover 2588 miles over the 24-hours, an average of 107.8mph. This would have secured it 8th place ahead of the works Porsches had it have been competing normally.

The Rover BRM was stylishly re-bodied and fitted with regenerative heat exchangers in time for the 1965 Le Mans race, where it did actually compete. Driven by Graham Hill and Jackie Stewart, the car had to have its power deliberately reduced when the jet pipe temperature rose, but it still finished successfully in 10th place. It was later found to have sustained compressor turbine damage, probably from ingesting some object during practice.

Although the Rover gas turbine project never achieved low enough power unit costs for a production car, Rover did a lot of business selling small turbines for a wide range of applications, from auxiliary power plants in aircraft such as the Avro Vulcan V-bomber to laboratory test bed installations for Universities and technical colleges. Experimental applications included Leyland gas turbine trucks and the Advanced Passenger Train (APT).

Tank Engine Tales (6)
Rover took over the Meteor Tank engine project from Rolls Royce in 1943, as a ‘swop’ for the jet engine work. The Meteor was an unsupercharged version of the 27-litre V12 Merlin aero engine, tuned to suit the requirements of big battle tanks.

By January 1950, Rover were producing not only the regular (petrol) Meteor 27-litre V12 tank engine, developing 620bhp and 1500 ft lbs of torque, but also a Meteor Diesel with 470bhp. In addition they had developed an 18-litre V8 ‘Meteorite’ version of the engine, also in petrol or diesel form.

The Rover Meteor engine powered the Centurion tank, and in its ultimate fuel-injected form, it was used in the later Conqueror tank. The Thornycroft ‘Mighty Antar’ tank transporter was fitted with the Rover Meteorite V8 engine, thus giving the British Army some useful engine service and parts rationalisation.

At their Acocks Green factory, Rover worked alongside the MoD’s Fighting Vehicle Engine Research and Development staff, with extensive special test facilities such as extreme climate chambers. The Rover Meteorite engine was also developed for Marine applications, including Admiralty and H.M.Customs launches.

Production and development of these very large Rover engines continued until 1964. There is a technical link with today’s Rover K Series engines, in that both families use aluminium alloy castings under compression by long-bolt fixings.

Geographical Gleanings (9)
Rover began car production in one of its existing cycle factories, ‘The Meteor Works’ at West Orchard, in Coventry, and this city remained its main centre of operations until 1940.

A former munitions factory in Tyseley, Birmingham was taken over to produce the 1919 Rover 8hp chassis, (which were driven to Coventry for bodies to be fitted). Rover continued to use the Tyseley plant for production of engines, gearboxes and axles until the 1980s.

Rover joined the Government’s aero-engine ‘shadow factory’ scheme in 1936, with the No1 factory at Acocks Green, Birmingham coming on stream in July 1937. No2 factory in Solihull was built in 1940. Following the Coventry Blitz, much Rover activity was dispersed, and by 1942, Rover was running 18 different factories around Britain, including six shadow factories, one of which was the secret underground facility at Drakelow, near Kidderminster.

After the war, Rover sold off its war-damaged Coventry factories and set up its core production plant at Solihull. It had already bought up farmland around the former shadow factory in anticipation of future expansion. Acocks Green was also retained, being primarily concerned with the Meteor tank engine and its derivatives. Tyseley continued as the engine, gearbox and axle plant, supported by a number of smaller satellite factories nearby.

Government policy in the late 1950s and early 1960s restricted Rover’s plans to expand at Solihull. Instead, to build the transmission and suspension components for the 1963 P6 Rover 2000, Rover had to build a factory and parts depot at Pengam, near Cardiff in South Wales.

Planning constraints also prevented Rover from building a body plant at Solihull for the 1976 SD1 range. Bodyshells therefore had to be shipped from the corporate plant at Castle Bromwich.

In 1982, Rover SD1 production was moved to Cowley, allowing the bodyshell production and final assembly to take place on the same site for the first time. The 1986 Rover 800 and 1993 Rover 600 ranges were also built at Cowley, as were the first new Rover 75 models in 1999.

From 1982 onwards, Solihull became a dedicated Land Rover plant, with production work being progressively transferred to there from all the other old Rover Birmingham sites.

In 1984, the first Longbridge-produced Rover, the original ‘SD3’ 200 Series, was launched, followed by all subsequent Rover 200, 400, 25 and 45 evolutions to the present.

Following the break-up of the Rover Group by BMW in 2000, the Rover 75 production facilities were transferred from Cowley to Longbridge, thus consolidating all Rover car production on one site.

Rover’s product portfolio increased to its largest range in 2003, with the CityRover, Commerce car-derived-van, Rover 25 (the Company’s best-selling car), the Streetwise ‘urban-on-roader’, the Rover 45 and 75. New versions launched in 2004 completed a revised and modernised face of Rover.

Historical ‘Character’ Features (14)
Most Rovers from the early 1930s to the late 1950s featured a handy means of checking the engine oil level from the driving seat - by pressing a button, the fuel gauge was temporarily connected to a float sensor in the sump.

A reserve fuel facility featured on Rovers from the 1930s right up to the last P6 models of 1977. It simply consisted of an alternative, lower-mounted feed pipe in the fuel tank. As soon as the driver changed over to the reserve feed, there was a known quantity of fuel, usually something over a gallon, to drive on.

The Wilmot-Breeden harmonic stabiliser front bumper was available on several different makes of car, but Rover was one of the most consistent users in the 1930s. It was designed to damp out torsional vibrations in the channel-frame chassis on rough roads.

Another proprietary device that the 1935-47 Rovers became strongly associated with was the Luvax-Bijur centralised chassis lubrication system. This used inlet manifold vacuum to activate an oil pump that fed up to two dozen metering points on the chassis via fine pipes. This did away with need for many grease nipples in the days when most cars required servicing every 2-3,000 miles.

Perhaps more for ‘pride of ownership’ than for use, Rovers from the 1930s up to the P5 of 1958-73 had a neat tray of small hand tools set silently in sorbo rubber, usually sliding out from under the fascia.

Adjustable steering columns have featured on many modern Rovers from the 1963 P6 onwards. But even the 1936-49 models offered alternative column rake settings.

Before bulb failure warning lights appeared on the 1976 Rover SD1, Rovers used a variety of devices to let the driver see that the front sidelamps were working - from red tell-tale lights on top of the old separate sidelamp housings to refractive prisms above built-in lamps.

Many Rovers in the 1930-49 period had glass louvres in the tops of the doors to allow draught-free ventilation through slightly-lowered windows.

In the days when hand signals were widely used, a popular feature on the driver’s door of many 1930s and 1940s Rovers was a high-geared window winder, using a long lever to lower or raise the window more quickly than any electric window!

After trying a column gearchange on the original 1949-53 P4 75 model, Rover responded to customer pressure by designing a unique central floor change with a raised semi-remote control that still allowed a central passenger on bench-seat models. This even had an adjustable positioning to suit driver preferences or biasing for either right or left hand drive.

Another P4 control that evolved into a unique format was the handbrake - after trying a plain vertical lever to the offside front of the driver, and a conventional horizontal lever to the offside of the driver’s seat, Rover settled on the vertical lever but with an extension handle for easier reach - it then became known as the ‘Shepherd’s Crook’ handbrake.

The Rover P6 (2000/2200/3500) range (1963-1977) had an unusual option of an external spare wheel mounting on the boot lid, for those requiring extra boot space. There were in any case two alternative wheel stowage positions inside the boot, a feature carried over to the SD1 range in 1976.

The Rover SD1 3500 was the first British car to have central locking as standard. The interior locking switch on the transmission console was initially referred to in internal documents as the ‘anti-mugging switch’.

A long-standing Rover practice was to offer two different four-door body styles across its range. This meant that the 1936-47 12hp, 14hp and 16hp models, and the 1948-49 P3 75 and 60 models were all available with either a ‘six light’ style (six side windows and a high roof line) or a ‘four light’ design (four side window and a lower ‘Sportsman’ roof line). This was echoed by the P5 3-litre and P5B 3.5-litre ranges between 1961 and 1973, when saloon and four door Coupe versions were available. Another range which offered a distinct choice of body style was the Rover 800, launched in 4 door saloon form in 1986, but also available in ‘Fastback’ 5-door format from 1988 and the 2-door Coupe from 1993.

Economy Stories (4)
In 1926, Rover publicist Dudley Noble arranged for the RAC to select any Rover 9/20 off a showroom floor, then allow two girls to drive it as far as they could for a total cost of £5. The end result was 2,007 miles, on 49 gallons of petrol, or 40.9 mpg. The expenditure of four pounds, nineteen shillings, five pennies and three farthings included two replacement side lamp bulbs!

To prove that the 9/20 could achieve good economy even with the higher speed limits in Continental Europe, Dudley Noble took one, with a party of four including an RAC observer, on another trial in 1926. They did 779 miles in Britain at a 20 mph average to record 39.95 mpg, then 821 miles through France to Monte Carlo at a 30 mph average to achieve 35.85 mpg.

In a much later continental jaunt of 1993, four Rover diesel cars drove from Coventry to Milan, with an AA observer to monitor the seals on the fuel fillers. The Rover Metro 1.4LD returned 79.1 mpg, both the 218 and 418 diesels tied with 75.5 mpg, but the biggest car, the Rover 825 SD Turbo, used its high gearing to record a remarkable 82.66 mpg.

The thirstiest Rover car ever built must be the original JET 1 gas turbine car, without regenerative heat exchangers, which could consume kerosene at the rate of 1 or 2mpg! The final T4 turbine car could achieve between 10 and 20mpg.

Major Accolades won by Rovers (6)
To prove the stamina and hill climbing ability of the Rover 14/45, introduced in 1924, an example spent 12 hours performing fifty consecutive climbs of the Bwlch-y-Groes test hill in North Wales. It was duly awarded the RAC Dewar Trophy for technical achievement in 1925.

In 1951, the Dewar Trophy again came to Rover for demonstrating the world’s first gas turbine car in 1950, while Rover’s more recent associations with this prestigious award, were in 1971, for the design of the original 1970 Range Rover, and in 1995 for the development of advanced holographic analysis of vehicle vibration characteristics.

Rover took the very first European Car of the Year award in 1964 with the P6 Rover 2000. The Rover SD1 3500 won CotY again in 1977. In 1999, the Rover 75 was the only executive car to be short-listed for CotY.

Safety awards won by Rovers have included an AA Gold Medal for the P6 Rover 2000 and the Don Safety Trophy for the SD1 3500.

The team behind the design of the Rover K Series engine won the top award of the Institute of Mechanical Engineers Automobile Division, the Crompton Lanchester Medal. Another recognition of the K Series project was the award of the Viva Shield from the Worshipful Company of Carmen.

Rover shared the 1991 MacRobert Award from the Fellowship of Engineering with Moulton Developments Ltd for the development of the Rover Metro with K Series engine and interconnected Hydragas® suspension.