My Dad was a main dealer, and I had the privilege of test-driving a pre-launch car three weeks before its release. I was 20 at the time, and can still remember the stares from passers-by. A revelation to most people!
The car should have been a saviour for BL,?This car was absolutely atrocious in terms of build quality, and they rotted out in only a few years! The rear arches almost falling off? The trim fell to bits! The building of this and others from BL would be subject to disharmony in the workforce ,so how would you get a good product? Stories of ball bearings being put into the sills and worse?
The prediction of the number of cars was well on but the fact the motorways stalled from the 80s onwards bar a few extensions here and there is another story. For the population density our motorway network in the UK is pitiful. We don't have the trains either. Compare to Japan, France or Germany for equivalent nations with both far superior roads and railways too. On another note though, the SD1 was, and still is, a beautiful car.
Watching the p6 go over the cattle grid had me laughing my arse off , we had a p5 and p5 coupe , and like “ALL” rovers from then on it was an underpowered bad handling rot box , i always wanted the sd1 right up until i got in one , I’ve been a Volvo owner ever since
When I first saw this car i thought it was achingly beautiful. Like something from the future. Modern with some heft to it. Ithought it to be the most stunning car I had seen in my life, Later on I felt similarly regarding the Porsche 928. It is tragic that the SD1 fell victim to shoddy workmanship and strikes. It coud have revived the ailing UK motor industry. Instead it handed it to Germany.
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.
She picks up her new Rover, in France, british number plate, right hand drive. Then at 3:00 Anton Rodgers drives his british registered right hand drive car on the wrong side of the road.🤔
Raymond Baxter at his best and a P6 owner of considerable years. Wonderful film but give me a P6 any day over the SD1. Thanks for sharing this great review
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.
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.
These are such rad cars. It’s a shame they were sold at a time US manufacturers dominated the large mainstream sedan market. We never get anything cool in America.
my old man sold bl cars in the 70s, one day the demonstrator sd1 turned up... i was gobsmacked as were the other drivers when we went to lunch in the 3500
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...
I think that early crash tests were not primary to safe passengers but to see how the car would withstand an instant retardation from beeing hit by a hard object.
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.
Its 2023 - As an engineer who has a little experience with CFD flow calcs - today armed with a souped parallel processing top of range PC - or supercomputer - you can do some genuinely useful fluid flow calcs that will save time and money on real world testing, and give useful feedback and pointers. But regardless, you still need many Gbytes of memory and GHz clock speeds to make this practical. The idea that you could do anything useful in the 1970s to optimised car windscreen heating and wipers is hilarious. Good for your PR show though. Smoke and mirrors.
