Of course Post 3500 was always going to be about this. How could it not be?
Delightful and Doomed. Brilliant and Bad.
***** - oh? It turns out that they're not actually stars but things wrong with it.
The car originally conceived and coded RT1 (Rover Triumph) which was recoded SD1 (Specialist Division), is everything that just about every single modern car wants to be but fails at.
It is a hatchback. It has a nice rumbly V8 up front. It is a grocery getter. It can be a track burner. At 110" x 70" it is about the same size as a Falcon; so it can carry the family. It looks as cool as all get out.
Functionally this is doing the same job ad the current Honda Civic FL1, Holden Commodore ZB, or Kia K4. Basically it takes everything that all of the boring Brodozer ObeCity SUVs and ESTs¹ do, and wraps it up in the perfect package for actual humans.
But because SD1 was made in Heath's, Wilson's, Callaghan's, and Thatcher's Britain, it took what should have been automotive perfection and cheapened it out with the flavour of rapidly crumbling empire. Hmm... delicious.
Italian cars were known for having excellent engines but put them in bodies which would rust and crumble at even the nearest hint of rain. French cars were known for having excellent suspension but were held together with hopes and wishes rather than nuts and bolts and would fall apart in minor zephyrs. German cars were known for excellent engineering which was so advanced that they would work excellently until the point when they didn't. And British cars were none of these things, but came with random faults as standard.
Every British car made since 1966, has been made on a Friday afternoon² and comes with random faults as standard. If there are eleven cars coming down the production line, then all eleven will have a different random fault. The twelfth and thirteenth cars will also have different random faults but they will be more different than before.
The SD1, which had various names among which is the Rover 3500, is the pinnacle of combining cheapened out every single production process with random faults. The Rover 3500 and particularly Vanden Plas trim levels, set the car a cut below performance cars like the Jaguar XJ-S, which also gave you the added benefits of being so thirsty for oil that you could start an oil can guitar factory using the discarded oil cans, as a side business.
Up front the Buick/Oldsmobile/Pontiac 215, which was a 90° V8, was bashed and rebashed every which way until Friday, before squishing it into this very tasty looking machine. Morgan, Triumph, MG, Land Rover, TVR et al, all took this engine and made of it what they would. Sir Jack Brabham even managed to persuade Australian parts seller Repco to mangle this engine into a Grand Prix winner.
Rover wasn't done with it. They took the beating heart of a V8 and wrapped it up in pure British know-how.
They took the Italian propensity to rust, and applied it to floor pans, wheel arches, sills, door bottoms.
They took the French knack for having things fall apart, and gave the car Lucas electrics. I heard the word "Lucas" used so much in anger as a kid, that I thought that "Lucas" was a swear word. It wasn't just plug leads and the front console which randomly went dead - I have heard reports of electric windows not windowing, wipers not wiping and drivers who were given the choice of operating either the radio or the lights only.
They avoided the German ability of having excellent engineering just randomly break, by having cheap and bodgey engineering last forever. Forget disc brakes - let there be drums.
Nevertheless, despite all the trappings of being British car, the Rover 3500 was still excellent. In final Vitesse trim, the Rover 3500 put out 190 ponies, which although is not earth shattering, it was comparable with other contemporary executive sedans.
It managed to come close but fail to win the European Touring Car Championship in 1986 with Win Percy at the wheel, and the car was just hindered by the rules set. Being over 3 litres, it just never had the brute force of something like the Holden Commodore, and by the time that turbocharging came and ate everything with the Volvo 240T Terror Taxi, the Ford Sierra Cosworth RS500 and Nissan's GTR, it was over for the Rover.
In relation to today and being a car which ended production almost 40 years ago, it might be strange for me to compare it with anything on the road today but the truth is that every SUV secretly wants to be the Rover 3500. Cars seem to revert to being about 150-200 horsepower, about 110" by 70", and useful enough with a big door at the back, either a hatch or wagon door. All SUVs without exception are driven by people who either think that a car is an appliance, or by people who don't care about driving, or by sad old gits who have given up on life³.
Had it been Japanese it would have been better built but soulless. Had it been French or German or Italian, it would have had a soul but found other ways to break down. The Rover 3500 did the job perfectly but was let down by being built in Britain.
¹Emotional Support Truck
²England 4 - Germany 2: We're No.1 so why try ever again?
³ Don't want to be judged? Get a proper fun car.
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