MEET THE OWNER – TIM LEECH AND HIS ROVER V8S
By Ellie Priestley |
9th July, 2020
Forty-one years ago, the sight of a new Rover V8S in the company car park was a sign that its owner had ‘arrived’. The new flagship SD1 was ‘the ultimate Rover’ with ‘a new dimension of quality and style’, completed with the enamel Viking badge. Anyone seeing the bumpers finished in ‘black chrome’, the double coachline and the gold or silver-painted alloy wheels instantly knew they were in the presence of transport for the elite. Or at least a car driven by a Weybridge-based company director named Gerald.
The V8 debuted in spring 1979, and as Keith Adams notes in www.aronline.co.uk it was ‘a test-bed for the North American version of the 3500, which then undergoing preparation work in readiness of its launch the following year’. The new Rover also represented a symbol of confidence in the face of a growing number of complaints regarding the SD1’s lack of reliability
Rover intended the V8S to appeal to a company director who might otherwise have opted for an Opel Senator or a Volvo 264 GLE. BL also offered an in-house competitor in the form of the XJ6 3.4 S3, which made its bow in April 1979. However, Jaguar’s customer-base was probably too conservative to contemplate driving a five-door hatchback.
The price of a V8S was £10,699, and the list of standard equipment included headlamp washers, rear headrests, pile carpeting and ‘ribbed velvet’ upholstery. The cabin rivalled the Toyota Crown and Vauxhall Royale for sheer chintz – or ‘prestige’ as a Rover dealer might put it. There was also a choice of automatic or, as a no-cost option, five-speed manual transmission and – a genuine talking point in the late 1970s – air conditioning.
Autocar of 8th December 1979 thought the V8S ‘remains an extremely good car, well ahead of its rivals in many respects, but one cannot escape that feeling that the S specification brings it into tougher competition where it is less able to lead the field’. The scribe from the February 1980 edition of Thoroughbred and Classic Car grumbled that the chrome-plated door handles and exhaust did not move him to ‘paroxysms of joy’, but the virtues of the Rover ‘were many. And it’s British!’.
In late 1980 the V8S was replaced by the Vanden Plas, and today they are seldom found at classic shows; just six are believed to be on the road - https://www.howmanyleft.co.uk/?q=rover+v8s. Tim’s Rover was ‘originally from the Isle of Man’ and is the earliest surviving example. He came by it in August 1997 – ‘I still have the Autotrader advert’.
Tim finds ‘parts are surprisingly easy to find although interior trim is hard for a Series One’. In terms of performance, the V8S is ‘Surprisingly quick and very smooth - rolls a little bit, but the ride is great’. And of course, it still embodies, to quote the brochure, ‘a perfect marriage of Rover virtues’.
WITH THANKS TO – TIM LEECH, CHRIS POWELL and THE ROVER SD1 CLUB: https://www.roversd1club.net/
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