Classic car owner reviews on HJ
Trilogy
on 20 January 2015
Didn't realise classic car owner reviews were being posted. Good to see. Just found by chance. classics.honestjohn.co.uk/owner-reviews/rover/p4/?...5
Comments
Avant on 21 January 2015
That's a fine old Rover, one of the last of that stately line. The 2000 wasn't built to the same standards, and after that it was all downhill.
I always imagine Captain Mainwaring of Dad's Army - the bank manager - driving a late 30s Rover P2, and saying how hard he'd worked in order to get it.
SteveLee on 24 January 2015
Nostalgia is great - but as for downhill after the 90 - What about the Rover 75? - Clearly the best Rover ever - supreme comfort, good handling, good looking, yes some petrols suffered head gasket problems - the diesels can go on forever. It proved with a decent budget Rover could build excellent cars. I LOVED my SD1 Vitesse and my P6 3500S - but were they actually better cars than the 75? Nope. The Chinese fixed the K-series issues for peanuts (chucked a few hundred grand at Recardo engineering) why didn't BMW do the same? A resurgent Rover were going to take sales off them, all they wanted was Mini and to get rid of the rest - the rest is history - quite literally.
Avant on 25 January 2015
It was downhill in the 70s and 80s, but perhaps I was a little unfair to the later Rovers. The 214 and 216 were good cars, especially the ones with Honda engines, and the 75 was probably the best of them, as you say.
75 was a clever choice of name, invoking good memories of previous Rovers yet being bang up to date itself. I wasn't too keen on the dashboard with those sepia instruments which took nostalgia perhaps a bit too far - like a 1940s front parlour which was never used unless Aunt Bertha came to stay or there was a death in the family, or both. But there are many people who have hung on to their 75s with a modern equivalent hard to find.
daveyK_UK on 25 January 2015
The 213 was under rated, certainly the Honda engine was
madf on 25 January 2015
I owned Rover 75 and 100 .. both P4s.
Yes they had a lovely cockpit - sorry interior - abd were very solidly built but they yundersteered like mad and absolutley useless - like USELESS - in snow. Unless you had T&C tyres on.. As I was a student at the time, mine had not..
I had three Rover 800s as company cars and a 850D - they were the most unreliable cars I have ever driven. Pants.. Junk... Worst cars I have ever driven - devoid of any redeeming features.
No wonder they went bust.They lost the allegiance of the management class who decided which cars not to buy...
My 1947 Rover 16 was the epitome of everything the 800 should have been and was not. I ran one fror three years as my daily driver...
Edited by madf on 25/01/2015 at 16:08
Trilogy on 25 January 2015
Press loved 75. Public didn't. 75 was just too retro, sedate. Should have been modern, sporty, just like the SD1 was. Jaguar made the same mistake with the S-Type, but survived to correct it with the XF.
A travesty that Rover is no longer with us. A history of great cars at BMC, BL and ARG, littered with too many mistakes and strikes.
YG2007 on 26 January 2015
When BMW arrived at Rover they recognised Quality control was vital.
They introduced the rover work force to the "Cat test". It involved putting a cat in a BMW for 2 hours with the windows closed at the factory and if the cat was still breathing "just" then the car was correctly assembled !!.
The rover QC man replied they had a similar test involving a cat that if the cat was still in the car after two hours the car was correctly assembled !!!
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