Rovers in good nick.

[wildcat45]

This week's SOTW beat me to it. I was going to post something this monring about the car that followed it, the Rover R8. Rover 200 series from 1989 to 2005 or whenever it went out of production.

I have noticed just this week lots around in really good nick.

I have a neighbour with an H reg one in while. A 216 GSi - looks factory fresh. On the way to work a blue one passed me correct down to the wheel trims looking like it was straight out of a brochure.

Why have so many survived to the two decade mark umolested and original?

I had a new 214 SEI back in 94. Nice enough car but I felt it wouldn't last that long so chopped it after a year for a Volvo 940 Turbo.

[Boba Fret]

because most of them are driven, ish, by octogenarians and older. Pottering along once a week to clog up the aisles of your local supermarket, constantly moaning about the price of bread, on a saturday morning when they have the rest of the sodding week to do their shopping.

Or to church.

[Liquid Knight]

Because new ones are rubbish.

[aka_kerrly]

There are two old blokes who live near my dad with absolutely immaculate Rovers.

One has had his 1989 820Si since new and although it is in fantastic condition it is so drab. It's a pale blue with blue interior combination that wrecks it. Likewise another old boy has a Rover 620 that is in nightfire red (a very nice colour) but with a hideous beige/tan and red interior including red steering wheel + detailing on the dash + carpets. It must have been a very rare option that anyone with vision decided to pass up on.

I think the key here is both cars were bought by their owners as retirement presents....

[TTwiggy]

I think it was mentioned on the 'cars that rust' thread, that Rover were so sick of their reputation for crumbling to iron oxide, that from about the mid nineties onwards they galvanised the heck out of every panel they produced.

I'm quite tempted to replace my Jag with a Rover 75, in a suitably pensioner-friendly colour scheme.

[wildcat45]

You don't see very may 600s around these days. The older 200s tend to survive better.

[andymach23]

I bought a 1997 618is about 6 years ago. I paid 650 quid for it. It had only 55K miles on it and it was a dream for the money. Obviously pretty much a Honda. I kept it for 3 years and all it needed was a new battery. Nothing went wrong on it at all. I only sold it as I needed a 4x4 to tow a larger boat. After the three years I sold it for 450 quid.

I went from that to a TD5 Discovery which has had a multitude of niggly problems.

[tgr]

like andy I imagine it's the honda influence

[Balmoral Green]

1986 onwards the corrosion protection was much improved. In fact, October 1986 onwards for '87 MY saw a huge change in ARG product quality, warranty returns quite literally dropped to such a degree, it was like someone had turned a tap off, and were in fact better than the industry average from then onwards, such was the improvement. But people have long memories, harping on about BL quality of the Seventies, which had no relevance to ARG product of the late Eighties and beyond.