Rover P6

The Rover P6, produced as the Rover 2000 and the Rover 3500, was one of the classic cars that defined comfort and style in the 1960s and defined, too, the way that Rover was seen as a marque.

A new model, the Rover P6 replaced the Rover 90 (the P4 or Doctor's Car) and sold alongside the bigger Rover P5 (the Rover 3500) for the first ten years of its life. The Rover P6 was a new design, gone were the big, heavy lines of the P5, this new model had a stylish, almost streamlined, body with soft, generous curves that disappear into thin, narrow angles to give the car a very smooth and almost gentle look.

For this reason the Rover 2000 had a much wider appeal than the staid, solid and rather tank-like P5 and sold in good numbers and one customer (on two separate occasions) was my Dad! He had two P6s being extremely happy with the first and not so with the second. This second car was poorly made and had various faults with the bodywork which could never be put right and so it was sold off within a year or so and the episode put down to bad luck. It was just one of those rogue cars.

The Rover 2000, later the Rover 2200, was produced from 1963 until 1977 when it was replaced by the Rover SDI. The Rover 3500 P6 was introduced to the range from 1968.

The body was designed as a four/five seat, 4-door, three-box saloon designed to carry its passengers in relative comfort. For the most part the body is unstressed, the stiffness coming from substantial box members around the passenger area of the car.

With a stylish, comfortable body, the Rover 2000 offered two wide, single bucket seats at the front and single and comfortable back bench with a pull-down armrest. However, the armrest would rise to cater for an occasional fifth passenger and I recall travelling as such on several occasions. There was plenty of room for the fifth passenger although I was in those days a little slimmer and considerably shorter!

The 4 cylinder engine is square at just over 85mm which gives a capacity of 1980 cc. With a compression ratio of 9:1 and a single SU carb the engine produced 91 bhp with good torque quite low down.

To boost sales a more sporty version, the 2000 TC was introduced in 1966 and had twin SU carburettors (hence the name), a different cylinder head and a 10:1 compression ratio. This version gave 114 bhp with a corresponding increase in top speed to around 100 mph and acceleration 0 to 60 to just under 12 seconds.. The difference between that and the normal Rover 2000 was not phenomenal but it was there.

In 1973 the engine was bored out to 2205 cc and the car became the Rover 2200 available in both SC (single carburettor) and TC forms. This engine gave useful increases in power to keep the car competitive and, along with minor styling changes, represented the Mark II version.

To capitalise on the success of the Rover 2000 the engine from the Rover P5, still in production in 1968, replaced the 2 litre unit and the Rover 3500 appeared for sale.

This engine had an output of 160 bhp and transformed the humble and rather staid Rover 2000 into a fast, executive tourer that that conveyed its passengers in comfort and style over even indifferent road surfaces.

The gearbox was a four forward all-synchro one with the option of an excellent Borg Warner 3-speed automatic transmission.

The Rover P6 in both 2000 and 3500 form was a comfortable and stately car designed to widen Rover's appeal from that offered by the previous models.

In use it lived up to the Rover name and was a very practical and pleasant car. Not designed for performance, the car was comfortable and, with the 3500 cc engine, very pleasant to drive with plenty of power and torque low down. See the statistics sidebar for more information about the engine.

The Rover was in direct competition with the Triumph 2000 although it cost more to purchase. As can be seen, the Rover 2000 looked, against the other large cars of the time, expensive but, as an advert at the time put it, Rover 'takes motoring years ahead'. In fact, the Rover sold, both on its name and for its comfort, style and forward-looking.

The Rover 3500 was priced more competitively, however. In 1968 when it appeared it was around £1700, roughly £300 more than the Rover 2000 and £300 less than the Rover 3.5 (the P5). At this time most of the cars shown above were less expensive but they were not, perhaps, in the same class while the imported cars like Mercedes-Benz, which were of a similar standard cost vastly more.

These days the Rover is not seen as particularly collectable and good to mint examples can be had for a few thousand pounds. Particularly in the case of the Rover 3500 and this must represent good value for money.

One thing I do like doing is looking at images of cars, the bigger the better! My first checkpoint is always the long Bing search page and this time it has some excellent images. A link to the page is here.

Big images are better than small ones and clicking the link for wallpaper size images on the Yahoo search, here, brings even more of them.

I was surprised at how many images there were on the web.

There are a lot of excleent videos on YouTube, more than I thought and it is well worth allocating some time for a look.

It is always worth trying a search for the actual model names, such as Rover 2200TC or Rover 3500, as these will reveal websites that get missed if you just search for Rover P6 which is how I always think of the car.

I wanted just to mention two links and then leave you to find your own. First off, there is a good Wikipedia page which is here.

And secondly, a nice P6 club with a good list of events (on the right hand side) and a useful and well written history if you scroll down on the left. While at this website be sure, too, to check out the gallery (again the allocation of a little free time to look is recommended).