In the early eighties I moved from the shop floor in a BL garage to become a company chauffeur for a large electronics company and as such we were allocated company cars way beyond our position in the company, the first car I was given was a Granada 2.8GL estate which was great but had a habit of cutting out at motorway speed, after it nearly killed me one day on the new M25 I insisted they gave me something else thinking that I would get the Granada Ghia X which had been returned by a senior manager who had left the company. Instead they and to my great dismay they gave me a series two SD1 2600 so I was expecting to spend half my time in the pool car but to my great surprise I did just over 50000 miles in that in just over two years and nothing ever went wrong with it. It used to chew through front pads especially when they went to non asbestos but we used to do a fair amount of work in Central London.
Had a B reg 2.6 VDP and a D reg 3.5 Vitesse Twin Plenum and loved them both. Each was reliable and beautiful and inspiring to drive. Like the police I loved them in every way,🥰
Frigging Nora ! I had a V8s with nivomats on the back. You didn't need steering, those shock absorbers were were enough to put the car on the opposite side of the road. The water feature in both gloveboxes was interesting though.
For all Rogers woes, I can remember my old man buying a second hand 2600 in 1984. Absolutely nothing went wrong with it in all the years he ran it - if you discount the rust. It did dissolve in the end.
Veritas Vincit the reason the production company changed to Ford after the first series was that BL took the cars back at the end of the week and then brought them back the following week, the only problem was they were different cars often in different colours. Same problem on the New Avengers the only reason they stuck with BL was because the Jag driven by Steed was built specially for the series by BL. I worked in the dealership where they used to return the cars to which were then collected by transporter. Ford by contrast just gave then the cars and told the production company to call when they'd finished with them. The only reason they replaced the RS2000 was because it got stolen.
This car was one of the best track cars of the period Winning the BTCC Even today it’s still awesome It was brilliant just put together by lazy men Such a shame
my parents VW Passat 1977 had 2 wing mirrors, so you can fully load the trunk up to the roof, so it was a practical car for a family of 5... and not a Brit car...lol but i can remember, the SD1s was the only Rovers i saw here... some Austins too, but here people bought Italian, French, Japanese or German cars, only people who liked to suffer bought Alfas and Brit cars...
Great looking car design, in 1977 my Dad went from BMW to 3500 SDI, my school friends could not believe how cool the car was when he picked me up.....however in the 1st week the power steering failed, then brake fail...week two the central locking failed...week three the door seals started leaking in rain...in six months of ownership he had the car for only 28 days.....went back to BMW..tragedy
It's funny to see the size of the panel gap at the end on the green one. This was always my favourite car growing up and lusted after one. By the time I was old enough - most were sadly in car heaven along with Rover being the butt end of jokes. Such a shame!
"Quality", remember these were press demonstrators. The ones built for the paying customer (when the workforce bothered to turn up) were abysmal products.
It was called an LED machine and all it was able to do was check ignition timing and dwell angle and something else that escapes me, it is more than 35 years since I left the BL dealership. We used this machine for the entire range except Jaguar.
Such a shame. Wonderful design and to a point engineering considering the budget. The trade union and management competition across BL led to sloppy workmanship. Even my dads 1985 2600 Vanden Plas had major overheating issues at only 65,000 miles. He realised his mistake and got a SAAB 900 instead. He had no issues from his Granada, prior to the Rover.
8:34 "On the 2300, Leyland engineers are currently returning *34 mpg* at a steady 50mph" 8:42 "and on the 2600, they're ~ still returning *35 mpg* at a steady 50mph" One wonders why Leyland didn't chop the V12 Jaguar in half to give a 2.6 V6.
The Rover 3500v8 produced 150 bhp, the 2600 136bhp and they kept that lower on purpose. A 6 cilinder is very well capable producing same output but than everyone would have bought the 2600 for lower price. The 2300-2600 was a redesign of Triumph 6 cilinder engine.
@@TheRoverSD1 I was well aware of all that but wouldn't it have been cheaper to take a Jag V12 engine and chop off 6 cyls ? The 2300/2600 didn't exactly glorify themselves with wonderful reliability, did they ?
@@lewis72 The Xk wasn't a bad engine either to turn it into a 6 pot for the Sd1. Can't tell, wasn't at the engineeringtable. ;-) but yes agree on that.
@@TheRoverSD1 The XK WAS the Jaguar 6-cylinder, wasn't it ? V12 was all alloy & reliable. Component share would have brought costs down too... could have also gone into the Stag. Too much in-fighting between brands, I think. Jaguar were mostly stand-alone.
Is that the Seiko 0674-5009 i'm seeing? If that's the case it was the first Seiko to adorn 007's wrist in the 1977 "The Spy Who Loved Me" You have great taste Sir.
The eighties SD1's were built better than the 70's ones, but by the eighties it's reputation was shot due to those quality / electrics / fit'n'finish / rust issues on the 70's SD1's.
I can never understand why you had to sacrifice a wing mirror, when buying an entry level car. Rover weren't the only manufacturers to do this. In the scheme of things, a wing mirror was a very minor expense, but fundamental to driver safety.
Straight six engine with only 4 main bearings? - looking for trouble there! Like the original MGB 1962-1965 which had the three-bearing 1800 B-series engine and knocked out the bottom end in a trice if you drove it like a sports car should be driven! BMC changed that from 1965 to a 5-bearing crank and fixed the problem.
BL had some genius engineering, ruined by the fact that we have awful workers who can't make anything right. The Japanese embraced US ideas of total quality management and produced reliable, if not cutting-edge, cars.
Ok it was badly put together but the vision was fantastic! However, does make you wonder how the heck Peugeot, Renault and Citroen are still alive when Rover was about to die with this ?!
A quick summing up of the SD1 44 years later. Excellent design in theory But not very good in reality. 3500 :Engine good 2300: Underpowered poorly executed adaptation of a Triumph engine 2600: Ditto Body design: Modern for the day. Lucas wiring: Appalling. General build Quality:- shoddy and Rubbish. Assembled by a disinterested workforce who spend more time on their allotments because of industrial disputes than putting a decent days work in at the factory. To sum up, buy something foreign. For the same sort of money you could have a Volvo. They were virtually bomb proof & Guaranteed to last 21 years (and a lot did)
The Volvo's still do. My dad had a 1978 T Reg SD1 2600 that broke down not long after we got it and the exhaust fell off along with the accelerator cable breaking. He has had Volvo's ever since and the current one is 18 years old with 190,000 miles on the clock.
Standard requirement of a motor car a push button radio... My goodness who would think we would us oldies be sitting here in 2023 saying... my car has satnav/android auto as Standard...
When Peugeot where considered a prestigious brand 😬 oh how things have changes, but then again Vauxhall had the Monza & Senator and Ford had the Granda ……. How time moves on 🤷🏻♂️
Land Rover just went on from strength to strength, holds a great market share in all countries, too much negativity in comments. Current famous brands have awful quality and safety dramas all pushed under the rug by hideous advertisement.
he was talking about the leyland engines, not the buick 3.5 v8. also the bl economy tests used the manual 5 speed. this traning film was to get the sales team to push the 2.3/2.6, the 3.5 was a no brainer, it was streets ahead of the competition, aka...an easy sell.
7:10 Shouldn't a six cylinder engine have seven main bearings instead of four? The reason Toyota F's en 2F's last forever is because the crank is hold tightly in place by seven beefy bearings. Cheers
Land Cruiser The bottom end was never a problem with this engine the problem was the top end. When they were first introduced they suffered terribly from oil leaks from the top end mainly from the cam cover gaskets and the cam seal so instead of modifying the gaskets and seals BL decided to put a restrictor valve in the oil way to the head which used to then block up and cause the top end to seize. I remember Swan National bought 36 cars from us and they were on a twelve month buy back agreement and within 9 months all the 6 cylinder cars (29) had, had an engine replacement or a top end rebuild.
Peugeot was one original family owned till last decade, allmost 200 years. Amazing how Land Rover made by the same people has been such a great success.
We inherited a 1978 2300 in that mustard yellow. It was a pig to drive with a very heavy clutch and gearbox. Clunky as a Land Rover and as thirsty as it’s possible to be; an average of 21mpg. Interior quality was dismal, it rusted quickly and leaked water. I had no idea the engine was all-new, it reminded me so much of the agricultural straight six we had previously had in a LWB 1973 Landy. It was anything but refined. The only good thing about the car was the styling poached from the Ferrari Daytona...
@@zaphodbeeblebrox5973 Sadly this is true. If only in 1975 (when the then Labour government nationalised BL) it had brought in much better management and had kicked-out Red Robbo and his gang ?? Equally if (in 1969) the Labour government had passed Barbara Castle's "In Place of Strife" legislation on Unions (forcing secret ballots before strike action could be called etc..) there would have been fewer (if any) strikes. But I suppose that it is easy to say all of these things from the advantageous position of 2019.
My heart sank when my father bought a brand new 1983 rover 2000, on day two of ownership it caused a major traffic jam in Penzance as the engine stopped, later the central locking actually locked him inside the car, The build quality was atrocious, somehow he managed to swap the 2000 for my Mk3 Granada, and the 2000 was a problem, it looked great in silver but again its build quality was so poor, How can the car compete with Mercedes who had a far higher standard of build, it could not.
If only BL could have had better management , who would have brought in better quality control and build quality. Also they needed to kick out the likes of Derek Robinson (below) and his gang of Communist Shop Stewards who were going on strike all the time. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derek_Robinson_(trade_unionist) The actual Rover SD1 was a very good car. But as so many people commenting on this video have said, the build quality and reliability was so awful that everyone bought cars from other makers and BL (later Rover) went bust.
In the early eighties I moved from the shop floor in a BL garage to become a company chauffeur for a large electronics company and as such we were allocated company cars way beyond our position in the company, the first car I was given was a Granada 2.8GL estate which was great but had a habit of cutting out at motorway speed, after it nearly killed me one day on the new M25 I insisted they gave me something else thinking that I would get the Granada Ghia X which had been returned by a senior manager who had left the company. Instead they and to my great dismay they gave me a series two SD1 2600 so I was expecting to spend half my time in the pool car but to my great surprise I did just over 50000 miles in that in just over two years and nothing ever went wrong with it. It used to chew through front pads especially when they went to non asbestos but we used to do a fair amount of work in Central London.
Had a B reg 2.6 VDP and a D reg 3.5 Vitesse Twin Plenum and loved them both. Each was reliable and beautiful and inspiring to drive. Like the police I loved them in every way,🥰
I loved my sd1’s one of the best cars I ever owned.
My Dad had a yellow V8 when I was a kid, lovely car.
I once owned a 1980 Triumph TR8 5speed, air, Holly 4 barrel, convertible with the same motor as the SD1, what a blast it was to drive!
Clark Griswold always wanted one.
Frigging Nora ! I had a V8s with nivomats on the back. You didn't need steering, those shock absorbers were were enough to put the car on the opposite side of the road. The water feature in both gloveboxes was interesting though.
My 1980 V8S was in pukey green with gold alloy wheels: it came with a swimming pool in the boot.
The best engine for engine swaps ...a Rover V8 in a Fiat 130 Coupe is superb
For all Rogers woes, I can remember my old man buying a second hand 2600 in 1984. Absolutely nothing went wrong with it in all the years he ran it - if you discount the rust. It did dissolve in the end.
William Woodward, the replacement for Raymond Burr, another great presenter !!
Raymond Baxter
Who knew there were just so many different shades of brown?
Ee, that William Woollard was a car-tart. I've seen his Ford Sierra video 'promo' like this one for BL! He's still going, God bless him.
Just watched his Vauxhall Cavalier Mk3 facelift one and had the same thought.
I'll take a Silver 1981 Manual transmission V8S please, beautiful design the SD1 ♥️.
Ah, back in the day when drivers discussing mirrors knew the difference between a door and a wing!
My Dads 1977 SD1 V8 was pretty good, only let him down once, Lucas alternator failed. But the rust was starting to bubble through after just 2 years.
George Cowley drove one for a few episodes in the first series of The Professionals.
Veritas Vincit the reason the production company changed to Ford after the first series was that BL took the cars back at the end of the week and then brought them back the following week, the only problem was they were different cars often in different colours. Same problem on the New Avengers the only reason they stuck with BL was because the Jag driven by Steed was built specially for the series by BL. I worked in the dealership where they used to return the cars to which were then collected by transporter. Ford by contrast just gave then the cars and told the production company to call when they'd finished with them. The only reason they replaced the RS2000 was because it got stolen.
Then he got a Granada
Same rust protection as the 3500!!! The body shells were left outside to rust before they were painted!
Super happy to have just bought one
The 3.5 was then enlarged to 4.4 in Australia and used in the Australian only Leyland P76 .
This car was one of the best track cars of the period
Winning the BTCC
Even today it’s still awesome
It was brilliant just put together by lazy men
Such a shame
Ahh the good old days where it wasnt deemed necessary to have two door mirrors, unless you were posh
my parents VW Passat 1977 had 2 wing mirrors, so you can fully load the trunk up to the roof, so it was a practical car for a family of 5... and not a Brit car...lol but i can remember, the SD1s was the only Rovers i saw here... some Austins too, but here people bought Italian, French, Japanese or German cars, only people who liked to suffer bought Alfas and Brit cars...
That was the norm on the mighty Germans that apparently can do no wrong, just as 3 speed automatics too.
My mother had a 2600 in that green, great car.
Great looking car design, in 1977 my Dad went from BMW to 3500 SDI, my school friends could not believe how cool the car was when he picked me up.....however in the 1st week the power steering failed, then brake fail...week two the central locking failed...week three the door seals started leaking in rain...in six months of ownership he had the car for only 28 days.....went back to BMW..tragedy
Alan Wayte unfortunately that’s what happens when you put the unions in control of production
Awesome footage from Silverstone
It's funny to see the size of the panel gap at the end on the green one. This was always my favourite car growing up and lusted after one. By the time I was old enough - most were sadly in car heaven along with Rover being the butt end of jokes. Such a shame!
Same here.
I love the panel gaps and paint finish clearly visible even on potato camera.
D B a camera that has similar image reproduction quality to that of everyone's favourite tuber.. Aka spud.
Love the clunk the doors make when slammed shut Pure quality 😂
"Quality", remember these were press demonstrators. The ones built for the paying customer (when the workforce bothered to turn up) were abysmal products.
Official tests actually rated the 3500 manual at 39mpg @ 56mph and 28 @ 75mph.
If i ever become rich i will have a spanking SD1 ..
no left mirror on the 2300, incredible . An omission you'd expect on a tiny car back in the 70s.
A diagnostic socket! What kind of scan tool did you need to plug into that?
It was called an LED machine and all it was able to do was check ignition timing and dwell angle and something else that escapes me, it is more than 35 years since I left the BL dealership. We used this machine for the entire range except Jaguar.
How Renault are still making cars today rover disappeared
My dad had the 2300 eventually after a few years it started to rust on the wheel arches and he got rid.
Such a shame. Wonderful design and to a point engineering considering the budget. The trade union and management competition across BL led to sloppy workmanship. Even my dads 1985 2600 Vanden Plas had major overheating issues at only 65,000 miles. He realised his mistake and got a SAAB 900 instead. He had no issues from his Granada, prior to the Rover.
One of the hottest sedans in the 70s with 1 of the worst build quality and durability of all lux cars.....
I feel sorry for the dad's not owning the V8, how could you be that cruel to your self and your children
put ford back where it belongs ! you tell them Willie ! :D thanks for up loading.. interesting,,,
8:34
"On the 2300, Leyland engineers are currently returning *34 mpg* at a steady 50mph"
8:42
"and on the 2600, they're ~ still returning *35 mpg* at a steady 50mph"
One wonders why Leyland didn't chop the V12 Jaguar in half to give a 2.6 V6.
The Rover 3500v8 produced 150 bhp, the 2600 136bhp and they kept that lower on purpose. A 6 cilinder is very well capable producing same output but than everyone would have bought the 2600 for lower price. The 2300-2600 was a redesign of Triumph 6 cilinder engine.
@@TheRoverSD1
I was well aware of all that but wouldn't it have been cheaper to take a Jag V12 engine and chop off 6 cyls ?
The 2300/2600 didn't exactly glorify themselves with wonderful reliability, did they ?
@@lewis72 The Xk wasn't a bad engine either to turn it into a 6 pot for the Sd1. Can't tell, wasn't at the engineeringtable. ;-) but yes agree on that.
@@TheRoverSD1
The XK WAS the Jaguar 6-cylinder, wasn't it ?
V12 was all alloy & reliable. Component share would have brought costs down too... could have also gone into the Stag.
Too much in-fighting between brands, I think.
Jaguar were mostly stand-alone.
@@TheRoverSD1
The 2.9 straight-six in the early Jag XJ40s WAS half of a Jaguar V12.
The 3.2, 3.6 & 4.0s were 4-valve/cyl head derivatives.
i like the watche he is wearing i bought a retro one a few weeks ago
they , re more reliable than the car
Is that the Seiko 0674-5009 i'm seeing? If that's the case it was the first Seiko to adorn 007's wrist in the 1977 "The Spy Who Loved Me" You have great taste Sir.
I'd imagine driving that Rally Rover required balls of steel.
And with the capri's a bit of a handful on the track?
Blimey , that's Peter Sutcliffe the Yorkshire ripper at 18.28
Andy Nixon Fuck me it is. I wondered where he had got too🤪👍
Andy Nixon And that’s David Gower the cricketer at 18.46
@@gaygambler turns out he was racing cars for Rover . Good car but seriously dodgy bastard.
The eighties SD1's were built better than the 70's ones, but by the eighties it's reputation was shot due to those quality / electrics / fit'n'finish / rust issues on the 70's SD1's.
Ish just done a little Film with Mrs. Woolard !!
I can never understand why you had to sacrifice a wing mirror, when buying an entry level car. Rover weren't the only manufacturers to do this. In the scheme of things, a wing mirror was a very minor expense, but fundamental to driver safety.
Even top flight Germans had single mirror.
Straight six engine with only 4 main bearings? - looking for trouble there!
Like the original MGB 1962-1965 which had the three-bearing 1800 B-series engine and knocked out the bottom end in a trice if you drove it like a sports car should be driven!
BMC changed that from 1965 to a 5-bearing crank and fixed the problem.
they looked & yes... as you say they got it. the 2.3 & 2.6 did not like hard work, imo...not great engines.
No thats not true
@@Haffschlappe I had 2 MGBs so I know it is true sice the first one, a 1962 model, had the problem and the engine failed.
Traffic light grand prix?
SD1 V8 manual against a mk1 3000 granada manual
Il have the sd1 and beat the granada no problem
Its like watching crime watch......these guys were so desperate to make the public buy the rover
234,790,792 views they didn’t need to try. They couldn’t build them fast enough. Brilliant car and beautiful into the bargain.
BL had some genius engineering, ruined by the fact that we have awful workers who can't make anything right. The Japanese embraced US ideas of total quality management and produced reliable, if not cutting-edge, cars.
Ok it was badly put together but the vision was fantastic! However, does make you wonder how the heck Peugeot, Renault and Citroen are still alive when Rover was about to die with this ?!
Phil Tate French state aid!
Peugeot/Citroen have been bankrupt as often as Fiat/Ferrari but they bail themselves out against EU law funnily enough.
The handbrake on that 2600 is too high. For a brand new car. Dont ya think x
0:38 - the 'Dong' Trophy?
I want a new Rover SD1, please !
The Car of the Year 1977
i rather take a RO80, i far better car from 1969, and even looks better, not a copy of a Italian car...
The leyland Princess 2200 HLS was the nicest car in UK during that period!
A quick summing up of the SD1
44 years later.
Excellent design in theory
But not very good in reality.
3500 :Engine good
2300: Underpowered poorly executed adaptation of a Triumph engine
2600: Ditto
Body design: Modern for the day.
Lucas wiring: Appalling.
General build Quality:- shoddy and Rubbish.
Assembled by a disinterested workforce who spend more time on their allotments because of industrial disputes than putting a decent days work in at the factory.
To sum up, buy something foreign.
For the same sort of money you could have a Volvo.
They were virtually bomb proof & Guaranteed to last 21 years (and a lot did)
The Volvo's still do. My dad had a 1978 T Reg SD1 2600 that broke down not long after we got it and the exhaust fell off along with the accelerator cable breaking.
He has had Volvo's ever since and the current one is 18 years old with 190,000 miles on the clock.
Bloody hell is that William Woolard??
Eric George It most certainly is sir. 👍
He still looks the same
William Wellhard !!
@@kevinmanns7170 Really?
Standard requirement of a motor car a push button radio...
My goodness who would think we would us oldies be sitting here in 2023 saying... my car has satnav/android auto as Standard...
Fred Dineage on the Racing film
Economical
3.5L V8
Pick one.
When Peugeot where considered a prestigious brand 😬 oh how things have changes, but then again Vauxhall had the Monza & Senator and Ford had the Granda ……. How time moves on 🤷🏻♂️
Land Rover just went on from strength to strength, holds a great market share in all countries, too much negativity in comments. Current famous brands have awful quality and safety dramas all pushed under the rug by hideous advertisement.
what they dont tell you is it prob had a 'repco australian v8' engine fitted.!! not rover v8
Had a 3500 efi vanden plas was nothing but trouble' its actually a nice car but with a few problems
Clarkson car when new.... & when the door was fully able to open and close properly & not dragged or fell off the body
What??
Too many cars, too many brands, too many market segments to take care of. Trying to have a comprehensive take at the market with an outdated approach.
The same high quality finish… 😂
I wonder how much they paid him to do this? 🤔 😜 Lol
The going rate, I'd imagine.
Did he say economical? Had a 3500 auto and was lucky to get 18mpg 😁
he was talking about the leyland engines, not the buick 3.5 v8. also the bl economy tests used the manual 5 speed. this traning film was to get the sales team to push the 2.3/2.6, the 3.5 was a no brainer, it was streets ahead of the competition, aka...an easy sell.
My V8 auto had a bigger drink problem than poor old Georgie Best....
Didn't realise Paddy Ashdown was a car salesman
William Woolard....one of the presenters of 'Tomorrow's World'.
You're right , he does look like paddy ashdown .
7:10 Shouldn't a six cylinder engine have seven main bearings instead of four? The reason Toyota F's en 2F's last forever is because the crank is hold tightly in place by seven beefy bearings.
Cheers
Land Cruiser The bottom end was never a problem with this engine the problem was the top end. When they were first introduced they suffered terribly from oil leaks from the top end mainly from the cam cover gaskets and the cam seal so instead of modifying the gaskets and seals BL decided to put a restrictor valve in the oil way to the head which used to then block up and cause the top end to seize. I remember Swan National bought 36 cars from us and they were on a twelve month buy back agreement and within 9 months all the 6 cylinder cars (29) had, had an engine replacement or a top end rebuild.
@@philnewstead5388 Very insightful information. Thanks.
I remember a mates 2600 sizing its cam, what a piece of junk, the whole car was a step back from the P6
A push button radio ! 🤣
Back then it was a big thing
And no Bluetooth ffs!
Ironic that Renault is still in business and Rover went bankrupt.
Don't forget Peugeot.
Bcos the French Govt has been the largest shareholder in Renault for decades. It was consficated from a Nazi Collaborator French Industrialist...
@@dougbennett8592 wasn't too sure about Peugeot. .but I was 100% sure about Renault...
Peugeot was one original family owned till last decade, allmost 200 years. Amazing how Land Rover made by the same people has been such a great success.
I WISHD ID HAD MERCEDES W108. MERCEDES W115. MERCEDES W123. ROVER 3500.
We inherited a 1978 2300 in that mustard yellow. It was a pig to drive with a very heavy clutch and gearbox. Clunky as a Land Rover and as thirsty as it’s possible to be; an average of 21mpg. Interior quality was dismal, it rusted quickly and leaked water. I had no idea the engine was all-new, it reminded me so much of the agricultural straight six we had previously had in a LWB 1973 Landy. It was anything but refined. The only good thing about the car was the styling poached from the Ferrari Daytona...
yup,pretty much sums up my experience of them... horrible to work on too.
Wow , in those days when the passenger door mirror was an EXTRA ! and the sound of the door shutting was awful ! Truly awful car !!!! 😢 😢😢😢😢😢😢
Such an innovative & advanced car, sadly ruined by BL :-(
They weren't as well made as Volvo's were they u liar
3500 Rover economical? Load of BS. If it was that good. Where are they now.
I think that the word "economical" is used in relation to other larger cars with big engines (such as Mercedes , BMW etc...)
Unfortunately it was built by red robbo’s mates
@@zaphodbeeblebrox5973 Sadly this is true. If only in 1975 (when the then Labour government nationalised BL) it had brought in much better management and had kicked-out Red Robbo and his gang ??
Equally if (in 1969) the Labour government had passed Barbara Castle's "In Place of Strife" legislation on Unions (forcing secret ballots before strike action could be called etc..) there would have been fewer (if any) strikes.
But I suppose that it is easy to say all of these things from the advantageous position of 2019.
Piss poor studio lighting.
I’m sure that Volvo hasn’t rusted as fast as the rover
My heart sank when my father bought a brand new 1983 rover 2000, on day two of ownership it caused a major traffic jam in Penzance as the engine stopped, later the central locking actually locked him inside the car, The build quality was atrocious, somehow he managed to swap the 2000 for my Mk3 Granada, and the 2000 was a problem, it looked great in silver but again its build quality was so poor, How can the car compete with Mercedes who had a far higher standard of build, it could not.
With all those awards & accolades what could go wring? Answer, BL build quality & a lazy belligerent striking workforce.
I can't watch this!!! what a load of delusional bs 😂
I love old cars but I always thought even back in the 80s this car looked awful much preferred the Ford capri
Leyland fucin junk
If only BL could have had better management , who would have brought in better quality control and build quality. Also they needed to kick out the likes of Derek Robinson (below) and his gang of Communist Shop Stewards who were going on strike all the time.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derek_Robinson_(trade_unionist)
The actual Rover SD1 was a very good car. But as so many people commenting on this video have said, the build quality and reliability was so awful that everyone bought cars from other makers and BL (later Rover) went bust.