Saturday 2nd December 2017

Rover (P6) 3500 V8: Spotted

Remember when the Rover V8 actually powered a Rover? The classic car market is starting to...

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Speed matters. It certainly does. Many boring and mundane everyday tasks can be made infinitely more bearable if they are done faster. Paperwork? Yes. Meetings? Sure. Eating your greens? It just means you get to dessert faster. So what does a 47 year-old Rover have anything to do with speed? Surely, it is the complete antithesis to that.

Well, I've been reading through the old Autocar road test archive and as it turns out, this Rover Three Thousand Five (3500) is faster than many of its contemporary rivals, blowing stuff like the BMW 2000 Ti into the weeds in the 0-60mph tests. Admittedly, 10.5sec is hardly notable today, but quite an achievement for the time. It makes you wonder what happened to Rover in the intervening years to lose this momentum over their rival (Amongst many, the buy-out in 1994 certainly didn't help).

The Rover P6, then, was quite a revolutionary car for its time. After the war, many car companies simply went back to producing their pre-war designs, which suited the English middle-classes quite nicely. Change was slow and the long production cycles of the P4 'Auntie' Rover and P5 (beloved by royalty and government officials alike) were looking quite old fashioned when the 60s came around. Rover couldn't rely on that aging customer base for much longer, especially with the onset of the baby boomers. Enter the much sleeker looking Rover P6.

When you think of a sporting saloon car today, you think BMW 3 Series. The P6 was the equivalent of that back then. Compact, rear-wheel drive and featuring an efficient 2.0-litre petrol engine: a masterstroke, as the Suez crisis a few years earlier and the fuel rationing that went with it had given the buying public reasons to consider downsizing to more efficient options.

Fortunately, when the 3500 came out in 1968, petrol rationing had long since been forgotten and North Sea oil was beginning to be explored, so 17.2mpg - the typical fuel economy figure quoted in the test - could be tolerated. At least by those who could afford it.

But, that V8 did have more positives. Firstly, it improved the weight distribution of the P6. It was an ideal 50:50 split when you had a full tank of fuel. Refinement was better compared with the cast-iron four-cylinder and the new all-aluminium engine was about the same weight of the smaller unit as well. The only thing that spoiled the 3500 was the three-speed Borg-Warner automatic transmission and its rather long gearing - you could reach 60mph in first. It made the car more of a "very refined high speed touring car" rather than a "super high performance saloon". We'd have to wait until 1971 for the sportier 3500S to come out.

This Rover P6 is on for very strong money. If you look at the engine bay photo, you can clearly make out the front corner of a Lexus LFA, which perhaps goes some to explaining that. The advert suggests that this car has had a nut-and-bolt restoration, which certainly doesn't come cheap, but the P6 seems to be gaining some recognition in the classic car scene, with prices beginning to rise.

So, is this Rover still PistonHeads material? I think it can be. The P6 isn't the usual slow classic you might be expecting and it is perfectly usable in everyday motoring. And the P6 had a starring role in the crime thriller Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, where debt collector Vinnie Jones first used it to write off a Ford Cortina estate, before testing the build quality of the driver's door on Dog's head. Well, everyone has to earn a living, and that V8 is rather thirsty...

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SPECIFICATION - 1970 ROVER 3500 V8

Engine: 3,528cc, V8
Transmission: 3-speed automatic, rear-wheel drive
Power (hp): 170@5,200rpm
Torque (lb ft): 210@2,600rpm
MPG: 17.2
CO2: Vast quantities of
First registered: 1970
Recorded mileage: 67,484 (March 2017)
Price new: £1,801 (£38 10s 8d for a radio)
Yours for: £14,950

See the original advert here.

Max Adams

 

[Quhet]

"But, that V8 did have more positives. Firstly, it improved the weight distribution of the P6. It was an ideal 50:50 split when you had a full tank of fuel. Refinement was better compared with the cast-iron four-cylinder and the new all-aluminium engine was about the same weight of the smaller unit as well."

[sidewinder500]

It just means that the Rover (nee Buick) V8, built in light alloy, was essentially lighter, more refined, more efficient and even cheaper to build.

By the way, the tappets and other internals of the engine were still bought in from GM until the last engine!

[julianm]

First car I ever did 100mph in - on the Fosse Way - which is now 40mph just about everywhere. There`s progress for you.

[Jim AK]

I remember my Grandad getting one of these, Old English white with Black interior to replace his BRG P5B Coupe.

He always said it was 'not a patch' on the Coupe.

Wish we had kept those & not my FiL's X300 Jaguar Sovereign!

[huckster6]

Phenomenal car.
1) Metroplitan Police had a fleet for traffic duties, augmented by the dashing Triumph 2000.
2) The rallying legend Roger Clarke rallied P6s
3) A derivative of the Rover engine was used in a Repco-Brabham (?) Formula 1, considerably modified.

[CDP]

Such a pity they hadn’t kept Landrover and Rover together, separate from the BMC mess. It would still be a premium brand. In many way old Rover were the Mercedes to Triumph as BMW - which is probably why they hung onto that brand...

The “Road Rover” concept could be an awesome relaunch of the brand which prior to 1994 was rather forward looking, I hope they do it.

[P5BNij]

I've had three, a 2000TC and a pair of 3500 Autos, all S2s but would love a S1 V8. Great cars with loads of character, very well engineered and surprisingly nimble with the factory fitted power steering. Their values have been low for many years compared to other British classics which means there are a lot of nails about, but find a good one and you can't go wrong.

[swisstoni]

I remember as a kid walking past one of these crawling in a jam and noticing it sounded different.
It was a V8 burble. The rest is expensive history.

[rtz62]

Funny how things I saw in my childhood gave the car such ‘negative’ associations for many years in my mind...
The first P6 I saw was a TC, driven by my best friends dad. It seemed archaic when my dad and others were fooling around in (then new) Mk3 Cortinas. Friends dad wore specs and always seemed to have tape holding on one wing. Ok, bizarre, I know.
The second one was a near neighbours, she was a very left-wing deputy head teacher at my Junior School (remember them? They came before ‘Primary’ became the accepted nomenclature) and he was a stuffy older bloke with a Charles de Gaulle snout and a pipe permemnatly stuck in is mouth.
This one, and its successor was a 3500 S with the spare wheel situated on the bootlid.
So, two very different class of owner,two negative connotations.
Fast forward to my mid-20’s and all of a sudden they shook off all of those negative thoughts and I began to appreciate just how attractive they are.
And then, a few weeks ago,I saw one out and about near Chesterfield. The thing that shocked me was how the P6 seemed to have shrunk in the intervening years, being positively dwarfed by Mondeos etc.
And looked all the better for it, begging the question, do we need anything bigger than a P6 or it’s ilk?

[baldy1926]

The met still had one of theses in 1984. It used to be a regular at RAF Northolt it was used by the Northern Ireland office for escort duties. It was in that awful Brown but it looked so cool with the spare wheel on the boot.

[P5BNij]

baldy1926 said:

The met still had one of theses in 1984. It used to be a regular at RAF Northolt it was used by the Northern Ireland office for escort duties. It was in that awful Brown but it looked so cool with the spare wheel on the boot.

There's a Zircon Blue Met S2 3500 doing the rounds at shows these days, I had a chat with the owner at Gaydon a couple of years ago and had a close look at all the radio gubbins in the boot and cabin, he said all that technology now fits into an iPhone, and the non standard sunroof was there as an escape root in the event of an accident!

Here's my last one, wish I still had it...


Cabin is compact but very comfortable, the Mountney steering wheel was fitted by a previous owner...


I couldn't resist putting a set of S hub caps on it...

[Peppka]

It wasn't a Ford Cortina estate that Vinnie Jones wrote off in Lock Stock ....it was a Granada 2.8 Ghia estate that a mate of mine had bought new, had since traded it in and recognised it in the film.
My dad had two of the V8's the first an auto which did sap the power, my Triumph 2.5 P.I. was quicker, then he traded it in for a white V8 manual which was so much quicker 120+mph no problem, it went very well on Michelin XVS tyres, it was a pity the Rover didn't have a 5 speed box or overdrive like the Triumph 2000's and 2.5 P.I.
The Rover being white if you came up behind a car pretty fast they invariably pulled over to let you pass as plod was using them at the time - good game!
Both dad's Rovers were rot boxes as many cars of that era were, always felt it was a pity it wasn't developed more, when it was no longer available many of the farming community went and bought Volvos instead of the Rover hatchback replacement partly because the build quality was woeful.

[jjohnson23]

swisstoni said:

I remember as a kid walking past one of these crawling in a jam and noticing it sounded different.
It was a V8 burble. The rest is expensive history.

I asked my dad to be the guarantor of a loan on a Vauxhall Cavalier coupe (mk1). He came to have a look and said 'what about this one?' looking at a p6 v8s and got the salesman to start it up,as you said the rest is expensive history.
Wouldn't change anything mind,I loved that car.

[Will94]

There was a really interesting article in which Autocar got some of the 2015 COTY judges to compare a P6 (albeit a 2000) against some of the real COTY competitors.

The P6 was compared positively to the other on things such as ride comfort, visibility and driver involvement.

https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/new-cars/rover-...

[MadDog1962]

I wonder if anybody has ever thought of doing a restomod on one of these?

Upgrading the drive line to a fuel injected Vitesse unit might even be possible without changes to the bonnet line 😉

[unsprung]

sidewinder500 said:

By the way, the tappets and other internals of the engine were still bought in from GM until the last engine!

I love this sort of automotive trivia.

julianm said:

First car I ever did 100mph in - on the Fosse Way - which is now 40mph just about everywhere.

When this V8 saloon was launched, were traffic police generally more tolerant of speed? Was there already a national speed limit?

[el romeral]

Such a small exhaust for such a large engine!

[williamp]

Two other facts I love about the Rover P6:

1) The suspension: De dion at the back, independant at the front BUT with horizontal springs, mounted against the bulkhead

2) The reason? De dion is a very good, if space hungry solution, Aston used in from the DBS onwards. The front allowed a larger under bonnet space...so a gas turbine engine could be fitted

[Six Fiend]

All the panels are simple bolt ons too, Fuzz's restoration of one on CAR S.O.S was a good watch,.

There's a beautiful BRG one local to me in Bristol driven almost daily by an old chap. It looks ad sounds magnificent.

My great uncle, who only had one arm, owned a couple when I was a lad. Much to my disappointment they were 4cyls but a neighbour had a V8S.

Nearly bought one from PHer and budget rally adventurer FiveTenBen a few years back.

[ChilliWhizz]

Always loved the 3500... Here's a pic of one I snapped at a PH meet earlier this year....