2006 Rover City Rover Goes For a Drive 

Who remembers Top Gear’s 2004 road test on the CityRover when James May went undercover at a Rover dealer?

I was a Rover mechanic when these came out. The only pre-delivery inspection I've done that also required a water pump as it was leaking on the transporter.

If the car was keenly priced when new. They could have sold plenty if it was cheaper than a Ford Ka, Fiat Panda or Kia Picanto due to its shortcomings. The problem was that MG Rover’s management were greedy and arrogant. They lacked awareness of Rover’s brand perception. Poorly made, poorly marketed and overpriced made it basically unsellable.

The last nail in the coffin of Rover

As long it is cheap and doesn't break down every week it can be a fun little car. Drove Citroën ZX 1.4 8v for 5 years. Simple car, no luxury at all, well it had a digital clock... Went to Luxemburg,France, Switzerland and even Italy.The 75hp ZX got me everywhere.

Can't believe it only took 10 years for Rover to go from the 827 Vitesse and the Turbo Coupe to churning these out.

My son had one it was a really nippy little car , very underrated.

Hi Matt, Thanks for an interesting review of the CityRover (Tata Indica). Having lived in India, Pune to be precise, through the noughties, I actually owned, from new, a Tata Indica 2000 LXi, which I purchased in 2001. This was the top line model in India and looked and was optioned pretty much the same as the CityRover. The only exception was it lacked any airbags, and yes the tea shelf did extend all the way across the dashboard. The other oddity was that the rear seat wasn't split folding! Also the 1405cc engine, in India only produced a maximum of 65bhp and while it was OK in the city, taking it on a longish (70 miles or so) run to Mumbai (Bombay), where my wife's family lived, clearly showed the lack of power. I had the privilage to take a tour arround the Tata factory in Pune where both the Indica and the CityRover were being produced side by side. It was obvious which was which as the CityRover had it's altered and rebadged front end right from the production line. At that time none of the cars came with factory fitted radios, they were always a dealer fitted option, even in India. The Tata factory was co-located, in Pune, with the Mercedes production facility where they assembled imported knocked-down kits of the Mercedes vehicles. I would like to correct one erronous statement from the start of your review, where you said that the CityRover's original Indian vehilce was badged as both the Indica and the Indigo in some markets. Actually the Indica was always the 5 door hatchback, while the Indigo was a 4 door, 3 box saloon built on the same platform. There was also an estate version of the Indigo. As my family grew I replaced the Inidica with a Tata Indigo LX. This had the 1405 indirect injection diesel engine producing just 62bhp. Dispite the slightly less overall power this was actually an excellent long distance cruiser, by Indian standards, and it took us to Kerela and back and several trips to Goa and also across to Hyderabad on many occations, for family visits. Again thanks for a very interesting review. Jonathan.

My Dad brought one , brand new . The first ever new car he has brought. He sold it back to the Rover garage and brought another Rover , 214 . He hated them both . He now has a nice scooter with 8mph limit .

The “z” on the clock is to “zero” the minute of the time you’ve set, if I remember correctly. A Radio-CD was a dealer fit option and standard on the “Style” but was a “Panasonic” unit (or possibly Sony, i forget but definitely wasn’t Blaupunkt) so that one is not original.

When you think about the number of jobs that crap like this cost and how shoddy the Phoenix group’s business model was, to pass it on to the customer at a 40% mark up as an example, the CityRover is criminal. The state of the fit and finish in them is embarrassing. Feel like when this was released even the most ardent Rover fanatic could see that they were doomed. Such a shame.

The Union Jack on the boot was real irony. Quite well specced for it's time and despite everything, still quite fancy one.

I feel uncomfortable even referring to this monstrosity as a Rover. At some point in my head I've decided City Rover was a separate marque like Land Rover so I can block it out and forget it exists.

Bet Ian from HubNut is watching with interest hehe. There’s something - despite the terrible pedigree and execution - that is oddly likeable about the CityRover. Dunno why. Great review Matt!

Poor rover the French or Italians would never let that happen to their industry. All our governments care about is dodger finance and insurances, lawyers for you and gambling. Good program on Radio 4.last week about the demise of rover (the reunion). Just as it was reviving with Honda the government sold it to its chums in British aerospace. The rest is a sad tale.

I can believe the rover consortium only paid £1500 a car and then sold the cars back to Rover for near double, if Rover could of sold these basement cheap they would of probably sold a decent amount of them when rover went under I remember car supermarkets been full with these, i think when rover went bust a stock of them was already on the water to the uk Also had a woman who brought a cityrover to the garage who was convinced it was the new metro......and she never stopped calling it a metro

475 on the engine = 4-cylinder, 75mm stroke.

So the CityRover is actually quite a good looking little car that is very spacious for its size, has a punchy 1.4 engine, ok gearbox, good comfortable seats and driving position, good equipment and ok safety etc. But with poor fit and finish in the interior and a choppy ride........whats the problem? That sounds ok to me for a small cheap car from india! Sounds no different to a late 90's Escort to be honest! I guess the problem was the price. Yes the 2004 Fiat Panda, Kia Rio, Vauxhall Agila and Ford Ka may have been screwed together a bit better (or where they?....Iv'e no experience of those cars so I couldn't comment) but I guess if the CityRover was priced lower it would reflect this. I mean the CityRover is arguable better looking than most of its rivals. To many people comment and have strong opinions about cars and products which they actually have zero experience and knowledge about. Its also known that us Brits love to joke and mock ourselves. So, I am of the opinion that the CityRover isn't THAT bad.

I worked on a few of these when they were relatively new, always made me laugh how the VIN plate is bent in a L shape and riveted near the strut tower Also theirs a bloke near me in wakefield with a yellow RHD tata version, spoke to him before he had something to do with rover and its a pre-production uk car, i don't think rover even sold them in yellow

Is the towing eye permanently fixed on the front "just incase" or has the manufacturer that little faith in the car? Nice video again Matt.

Matt thanks for the review, I love your energy and balanced approach. The story of Rover with all its technical innovation ending up selling this second rate product on the basis of a badge is the ultimate in corporate cynicism. In Australia, Holden did a similar thing rebadging Daewoo cars. Worked for a while until transmissions and engines started failing en masse at low mileage. Holden is also no more...

Remember looking at one in a Rover showroom... the door mirror case had broken and most of it was missing - inside the showroom. Enough said. Poor Rover...

Great video and I appreciate the time taken to cover this car with such detail. The problem is, these weren't great cars by any standard, and I wouldn't have been too confident driving it, given the amount of bouncing on the suspension, and the car almost looked as if it was going to skid sideways when you did the brake test.

You can tell that Rover Management (or should that be Mismanagement) had given up by then. They just wanted something cheap they could chuck out the door and make a little bit of money.

Not sure if you still monitor comments on such an old video, but I've been aware of your content for a good while and enjoyed your videos on and off, however I got properly into your content following the 200 vi journey, and I'm binging the channel as a result, These reviews are EXACTLY what I miss about the old format (pre clarkson) Top Gear: concise, fair, informative, and deeply interesting. Love it!

I do love a Furious road test, I guess the outcome would be that it’s terrible if you think of it as a Rover but actually it’s not that terrible really. Great work again 👍🏼👍🏼

After the P5B, things were never the same. I owned a saloon, and a coupe, and they were great! Despite the enthusiasm for the tea shelf, I wouldn't have one of these as a gift.

Hi Matt,what a review on this City Rover,for the mileage its very clean,apart from the small issues it has,the Rover drves very well.

At the right price its might have sold enough to justify its existence. They pitched the price so high it was never going to sell. I just laughed when I saw the price. The emissions just edged it into the next VED band as well.

Another great video fantastic quality a real pleasure to watch , don't know if you have brought some new filming kit ? You are as always doing a great job keep them coming please.

Congratulations on the Diamondbrite sponsorship. I test drove a CityRover Sprite at launch and found it similar to the new-at-the-time 5dr Suzuki Alto, nothing special, but just not a bad little car. It looked quite nice I thought.

This was a good car in India. 20+ kmpl. Good price, great suspension, good reliability. It was a sales success here. But it wasn’t marketed properly in the UK and the price was doubled.

What a gem! Remember we had a customer with an Indian Red City Rover Select. Rover dealer encouraged them to buy it, claiming "They're selling like hot cakes!" It drove ok, never really let them down, although sourcing spares proved tricky- we had to engineer a few replacements. Lately we thought theirs was the last one running, but you've proved us wrong! At every service interval they insisted the service history book was stamped and up to date ( to keep its resale value up!) It was probably worth about 50 quid by this stage. They eventually chopped it in for a Honda Jazz, and we never saw them again-such loyalty! "Now we've got a proper car we're going to have it serviced at a proper (Honda) garage" ( and pay proper money, like £100+VAT per hour labour

I had an awful lot of fun filming this very car for my own channel a couple of weeks ago. The owner was such a great sport and was really kind to let both Matt and I do our reviews. I didn't like it as much as Matt, having driven one eight years ago and knowing what I was in for, but his video is still better than mine...

The Indigo was the saloon version of the Indica and the Indigo Marina was the estate version.

The boot-light will go on & off together with the cabin interior light, if its switch is set to the ON position - this means that when you open the boot, the cabin light also comes on - but it can also be turned off independently using the OFF switch as well.

Your attempt to put a positive spin on this car is admirable. However, when you look at the group of four who bought Rover from BMW for £10 and then just picked at the bones to make themselves richer you realise it was just a short term cynical attempt to make it look like they were running a car company rather than asset stripping. They divided the company into smaller companies so they could scavenge profit from divisions such as the parts business while letting the actual car production business go to ruin along with the careers of those that built them. A sorry tale of corrupt neoliberalism from which voters seem to have learnt nothing.

That's a proper triangle of doom

I always found it sad that an organisation who had managed to produce some brilliant small cars - The Mini, the Metro, the 25 - and were an authority on how to make them handle brilliantly, found themselves in the position where they had to buy something in and from a less experienced supplier. I like that the car's evolution to become a Rover makes it a bit quirky but I wish it had some even more endearing quirks like, despite its rough edges, it had actually been a surprisingly great driver's car or that City Rover had been pitched as a budget spin-off people's car brand, a bit like Dacia, and with lower prices. It's a car I really want to like more than I do. Great review as always

Great review and from your experience not as bad a car as it was made out. Just really sad to see a rebadged, uncomfortably shaped, thrown together, Peugeot derived engined car, carrying the Rover badge to the grave. The company that had experimented with jet power, built cars for prime ministers, designed the SD1 etc, were relegated to selling the City Rover as its only model. Left to die by a succession of governments who all seemed embarrassed that we once lead the world in car design and manufacture. What a shame 😭

The big appeal of this car is that every ride might be your last. No other car makes you think like that :)

Lovely Jubbly, great review of a inadequate car.

Ugh... Couldn't we just remember Rover greatness rather than see this sad sputtering demise?

19:16 That triangle of doom is nearly as big as the car!!!

Fab video!! I can't wait until you review the Fiat Panda of the same era. The 2003-2011 Panda was awesome

I know Ian Seabrook of HubNut fame had one of these, but I absolutely cannot stand these cars!

At first I thought this was Ian's old car! I think the stereo may have been added extra as I am sure it was sony stereos that they used unless they changed later in production. Am I right in saying the engine was a revised XUD Diesel peugeot unit or shared its roots with it. I was looking at these when they came out as a replacement for my troublesome K12 micra as I just wanted a cheap car!

I think the idea of the manual boot courtesy light is to ensure you don't end up with a flat battery. This is because many times the boot light has remained on even when the boot has been closed as the micro switch has stuck. However, with the manual system, lets hope you remember to switch it off again before you close the boot. My Volvo 345 had this problem so I disconnected it. I just use the torch on my phone. No more flat batteries.

I am of the opinion that the City Rover was a mistake. Matt mentioned the R3 200 series/25 with the 1.1 litre engine which imo was a great supermini alternative. Instead of bringing the Tata over here and rebadging it, Rover Group could have succeeded by cutting the prices of the 25 range to compete against the Fiesta, Corsa, etc. The R3 was an 8 year old design at this point after all.

Great review! I've always thought that as cynical of an effort as these were I always quite liked them. Your comment about the Phoenix Four (they even sound like a group who should be behind bars) was bang on. Ridiculous vanity projects and anything from wasting money on a Le Mans entrant to the SVR to the BTCC. They should have indeed been developing new models including Galaxy-esque MPVs to a new super mini. They were just having a fun old time jiggling the corpse of Rover around à la 'Weekend at Bernie's' style though, pretending all was well when they knew it was far from so. They then waltzed off into the sunset after pocketing millions each and left everyone who had worked even during episodes of pay cuts in the lurch. Four uttlery reprehensible individuals. Anyway, I'm off to watch your 75 Tourer V6 review!

Two years ago I had a Citroën C3 1.2 82bhp courtesy car I remember the biting point seemed quite high on it as well .

Yay another Rover video!!!!! Although my favourite Rover of the early 2000s is the Streetwise!!! But Top Gear gave it a bad rep and they were never coming back from that sadly and Rover passed into car brand heaven playing with Triumph, Morris, Saab and Pontiac!!!!! Very very sad 😔😔😔😔 But after watching the video I think Rover did actually try with sporty elements but fit and finish was sometimes shoddy which killed Rover incidentally it was all riding on this at the end of the day and it failed which was really really upsetting back in the day as frankly it was the end of the British motor industry.

In South Africa, we got this as the Tata Indica for the hatchback and the Indigo for the sedan. It did better here than it did in the UK, but I don't see them on the road anymore, and Tata had been losing popularity since the early 2010s anyway. The facelift Indica even had a CityRover bumper.

I remember this car was universally panned when it was released. Plenty of space and equipment and fairly quick were all the good points. I sat in one at the British motor show and remember how awful the interior was. Not just the exposed screws but the hideous grey plastics as well. Such a shame when Rover had made so many great cars that it boiled down to this. As a side note if that’s the best they could do with the ride, how terrible must it have been on the Indian market Tatas?.....

In India they also sold a 1.4 diesel and Turbo Diesel version with Indirect fuel Injection. Which is basically the same Peugeot derived petrol engine but heavily reworked and made into a diesel. Later on they replaced the hatchback Indica with the Indica Vista which was an all new car and had the 1.3 Fiat Multijet turbo diesel (badged as a Quadrajet by Tata) the Indigo saloon was continued and the 1.4 CR4 diesel was launched (this engine gained Common Rail direct injection). This car was sold until 2016.

I would like to know who did the MOT?.You stated engine management light on,and doors that don't open properly,two obvious fails straight away.Very nostalgic,but sounds like one to avoid to me.

great video once again, have you ever considered doing a 25 for a video?

I used to have one a few years back.They are OK, don't just jump on the "they are crap" bandwagon automatically.My only complaint is that the wash wipe didn't have an intermittent mode, which is handy.

Rubbery brake pedal, when was the fluid last changed?

Newest car I've seen to still use a mechanical odometer. Last car I had with one of those was a 1992 Fiesta MK3 - whose instruments looked very similar to those of the City Rover.

475 stands for... 4 Cylinder 75- the stroke in mm I was working it out for Josephs video lol :)

Shame the Rover engineers weren't allowed to improve the car the way they wanted, otherwise it would have been a much better product. Yes, limited to the base car, but nevertheless much better. That passenger airbag pod arrangement was also common when the first generation Fiat Punto's were fitted with dual front airbags. I totally agree with you about the "last Rover" never ending discussion.

Indicar is tough it has proven itself over 20years in many countries

I had a rover 114 gsi and apart from being comfortable it was a heap of a pile of smelly stuff

Matt, can you please reference Fondant Fancies next time when extolling the virtues of, or otherwise, the tea-shelf capabilities of any vehicle under consideration. Thanks.

this 2006 city rover looks in really good condition

Now THAT was a very lively drive. It looked like you needed reins rather than a steering wheel.

These have a certain charm I think!

An old colleague was Service Development Manager for the City Rover in the build up for launch. He was very defensive of the whole project. I worked with him later at Modec the electric commercial vehicle manufacturer where I wrote the repair manual before they went broke - the story of my life! MCW, Reliant, Metrocab, LTI etc.

"Porsche's got a lap timer, City Rover's got a NAP timer!" I want that on a t-shirt!

Great review of a ill thought out profit making exercise. Particular example looked good for a 16 year old motor and noticed only 31000 miles, well done to the buyer !

Z stands for zeconds

I love your enthusiasm (and your knowledge) but there has been a slide ever since the P5/P6. Fundamentally it was because others were in charge of the purse strings and maybe B.L. was the worst custodian of Rover. The P5 was lovely, old school and by a wonderful piece of luck it was endorsed by that V8. If you want to build cheap, cheerful, reliable and undemanding small cars, then look no further than the Dacia Sandero, which must be the benchmark for that sector. Rover were desperate. If you need to blame anyone, then it probably lies back in the 70s. They were terrible times for UK engineering.

As kids we were brought up on Rovers. P6 V8s then many SD1's also V8's. They made a mark on myself and my two brother's! When we get together we always end up talking about dad's rovers! We went everywhere in them. When rover went bust we were sad, but then we realised how the management of 4 stripped the company and the last vestiges of national pride with it! "You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time." (Lincoln) The tata (cityrover) was a shame, and it ridiculed India with it! They know own Landrover! Poor sod's! Thankyou for your excellent review. Can you do a review on a Fiat Idea?

I had the model before 114 gsi in night fire red and i loved it polished it every Sunday when permissible weather it glowed after using canuba wax the paint got deeper and deeper red god i miss it kids could have waited two more years two more years of fun lol kids first ☹️😂

Its actually goes forward and running and it's not rusted out . Better that most rover products

I know one of the previous owners of this example (Mr Roles as featured on Lloyd Vehicle Consulting), sadly WX56VZS isn’t on the road anymore, can’t believe it was registered in December 2006!

Very enjoyable review, and maybe the car wasn't quite as bad as we all thought.

Another great episode don’t see many city rovers around Hubnut had one for a a while. Well we did have a small car which was built at longbridge until bmw stabbed us in the back and moved it to oxford.

And today, Tata Motors is a very innovative car maker, and one of the largest one in the world...

The Z on the clock probably refers to Zulu, which is used in the military to refer to daylight savings time. I would have thought pressing it moves the time an hour forward or back.

“All the options” ... apart from the optional leather seats, which I had on mine! 😂

Good little city motor. Z is probably Zeconds ;-)

Nap timer...your on form today Matt.

The double folding rear seats was also a Metro feature.

God, to think this is what became of Rover 😭. Ive had several p6's and the end was this, a rebadged Tata. Honestly a crying shame.

Incredibly the board of Directors at Rover thought this car would be a good idea. I'm speachless.

That looks scary to drive. Brave man Matt.

I had one right at the end of production so a cheap price with very short warranty. Needed some fixing on warranty. Told the man at the desk, do I have to crash it to see if the air bags work? Air con clicking sound, engine cut out at top speed, odd spongy ride and took forever for heaters to warm. Mocked by other people and called popemobile. After about a year the engine stated to die, had to run it at lunchtimes at work in winter to prevent it from struggling to start. Managed to trade it in for not much less than i bought it was the oddest thing.

I had a few rides in something which looked very similar when I was visiting Calcutta (Kolkata) a few years ago, it belonged to a friend's father-in-law who employed a chauffeur to drive it through the exciting city traffic. It compared quite favourably with the ubiquitous Hindustan Ambassador.

This venture was a terrible error of judgement by Rover. I don't think they deserved absolutely ceaseless persecution by James May and Jeremy Clarkson however

Checkout the Tata Bolt. What this car became once JLR were finally let loose on it. Love mine.

I love my city rover it was great

Is the engine derived of a Peugeot XU, TU or older?

Sir i have noticed your subscriber numbers has jumped very quickly well done.👍

Surely that rear view mirror wasn't standard fit, looks like a stick on, although the Vauxhall Nova horn suits the car, as you say. The identical horn replaced the knackered one on my Mum in law's 2002 Audi A4, hilariously unsuitable. Top Gear should not be proud of what they did, though if every potential customer had bought one it still probably wouldn't have saved Rover. However, you confirmed that it is, without doubt, an ok car. In 1989, the Skoda Favorit was an ok car also, but Skoda priced it very competitively and it was a great success. Above all, it is definitely a Rover. Full marks to TATA for supplying a safe, good looking and reliable package that looked well as a Rover. Who knows, maybe the Halo version should have been an even more throaty MG Z City with Tony Pond strapped into its half pigskin Recaros.

Sold a few over here in Ireland but I can't remember when i last saw one. Again same story- it was hopelessly outclassed by more modern and better value options from Fiat, Hyundai, Kia, Daihatsu etc

Ah! Finally got the Diamondbrite sponsorship! XD

We have a lot of these in india. Diesel versions were popular as taxis until the production stopped. Good car for indian roads- jack of all trades and master of none- doesn't excel in any one area but doesn't suck either

Thanks 🙏 from Australia 🇦🇺