First-ever Range Rover Overfinch for sale

The Corvette-engined 570 S was among the original performance SUVs. Fancy a project?

Among all the magazine tests this car has featured in when new (pictures of which are supplied by the vendor) there is a wonderful extract that poses a timely question: ‘Does a Range Rover really need sports car performance and if it does are there many people who are prepared to pay extra for it?’ The year was 1988. The answer, we know now, was emphatically ‘yes’. Or yes to the second question at any rate - whether or not a Range Rover precisely needs the sort of output traditionally associated with supercars is still open to interpretation.

Back in the ‘80s, of course, people were even less convinced. But those were not the people working at Overfinch at the time. The firm was started by Arthur Silverton in 1975, and while it was originally called Schuler Presses, from the very start it made modifying the Range Rover its business. This car, originally registered 64 SPL, is said to be the first to ever wear the Overfinch name, and with a 5.7-litre Chevy V8 under the bonnet, it probably marks the moment when the firm really hit its stride.

According to another choice bit of coverage, the engine had already been deployed in a previous model dubbed the Schuler 570T, but alongside the new name - and after what was claimed to be five years of development - the 570 S increased output to around 285hp thanks to a superior compression ratio and a higher lift camshaft. The result, mated to a beefier four-speed torque converter from the Corvette, had 350lb ft of torque to call on from 3,000rpm. And would still be accelerating when the Land Rover-supplied needle had nowhere to go at 110mph.

Or at least that’s what it would do. Today the car needs a little TLC to get it back to something approaching its best. It’s inevitably spent some time off the road in the last decade while it languished in a large connection, and the dealer has only had it running recently via a slave fuel supply. But the good news is that it probably doesn’t need any welding and save for a bit of corrosion on the door frames, it should make for a solid project. Our vendor points out that the current iteration of Overfinch Heritage will charge you £385,000 for a fully restored car; it is asking for less than £10k to get you started.

The upshot of throwing yet more time and money at it is easy to imagine based not just on the car’s unique provenance, but also the fact that it provides such a handy blueprint to work from. The Motor article suggests the 570 S also earned ‘enormous ventilated front discs’ and had 1.5 inches trimmed from the coil springs to reduce the ride height while compressor-driven air struts were used to provide a primitive anti-roll system. Talk about foreshadowing.

And check this out. ‘Fatter tyres, lower ride height: they’re only the visual clues to the true nature of the Overfinch beast. Q-car disguises come no more potent than this. I undertook some of the most seriously rapid B-road driving of my life in this car.’ That from David Vivian (Mr Viv himself), who knew a thing or two about rapid. Obviously the industry caught up with and long ago romped past the 570 S, but conceptually it helped to show the world (and Land Rover) what might happen if it regarded ‘estate cars on steroids’ as something not just svelte and civilised, but good to drive fast too. Now look where we are.

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Mark_Blanchard

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