The 75 and ZT Owners Club Forums

The 75 and ZT Owners Club Forums (https://www.the75andztclub.co.uk/forum/index.php)
-   S525 OVP The Club Car (https://www.the75andztclub.co.uk/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=55)
-   -   S525 OVP - Restoration Comments Thread (https://www.the75andztclub.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?t=290362)

Scaramanga 27th November 2018 20:18

What magnificent hard work folks :bowdown:

Well done to you all :cool:

And a big thankyou to this man for designing our wonderful cars!

https://www.the75andztclub.co.uk/for...41e1ad6fdb.jpg

Teflon 27th November 2018 20:50

Seconded!

Cliff

COLVERT 17th December 2018 10:46

Quote:

Originally Posted by Scaramanga (Post 2690073)
What magnificent hard work folks :bowdown:

Well done to you all :cool:

And a big thankyou to this man for designing our wonderful cars!

https://www.the75andztclub.co.uk/for...41e1ad6fdb.jpg

Could you tell us more about THIS MAN ??

Teflon 17th December 2018 11:13

Quote:

Originally Posted by COLVERT (Post 2695033)
Could you tell us more about THIS MAN ??

Richard Woolley, designer of the Rover 75 :)

Cliff

Reebs 17th December 2018 12:13

Richard Woolley - Studio Director, Rover Design
 
Thanks Cliff, good link :bowdown:

We were able to interview him some years ago for the club website,

you can read that here :smilie_re: Richard Woolley Answers A Few Questions

and I was lucky enough to have a chat with him at the show too, I asked him if he had many constraints placed upon him by BMW in terms of costs, or the type of platform or materials that should be used, he said no, they gave me a brief to design a quintessentially British car and left me alone to come up with whatever designs I wanted. To this day he is still immensely proud of what he achieved and is gratified that his design still gives enormous pleasure to us owners. He owned a 75 back in the day and was sorry to part with it, in fact now he is actively looking for a low mileage, cared for 2.5 litre V6 Cowley example.

This was his original concept design, and the only thing he wasn't so happy about once it went into production was that the rear 'sat up' a little too highly for his taste, he would have preferred the car to have a lower ride height as seen in his drawings, but the decision to raise it was made to increase ride comfort.

https://www.the75andztclub.co.uk/ima...lleydesign.JPG


You can see him being interviewed by Top Gear at the car's launch in this YouTube clip (he's 3.13 in)



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1JYKBcoRAWk

clf 17th December 2018 14:55

Quote:

Originally Posted by Reebs (Post 2695049)
Thanks Cliff, good link :bowdown:

We were able to interview him some years ago for the club website,

you can read that here :smilie_re: Richard Woolley Answers A Few Questions

and I was lucky enough to have a chat with him at the show too, I asked him if he had many constraints placed upon him by BMW in terms of costs, or the type of platform or materials that should be used, he said no, they gave me a brief to design a quintessentially British car and left me alone to come up with whatever designs I wanted. To this day he is still immensely proud of what he achieved and is gratified that his design still gives enormous pleasure to us owners. He owned a 75 back in the day and was sorry to part with it, in fact now he is actively looking for a low mileage, cared for 2.5 litre V6 Cowley example.

This was his original concept design, and the only thing he wasn't so happy about once it went into production was that the rear 'sat up' a little too highly for his taste, he would have preferred the car to have a lower ride height as seen in his drawings, but the decision to raise it was made to increase ride comfort.

https://www.the75andztclub.co.uk/ima...lleydesign.JPG


You can see him being interviewed by Top Gear at the car's launch in this YouTube clip (he's 3.13 in)



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1JYKBcoRAWk

From those sketches it looks like the car was designed to be a rear wheel drive (the proportions of the wing in front and behind the front wheel). I wonder was it expected to have bmw drive trains ?

Going by the wheelbase too, and position of rear wheels it would have had great comfort. Although being low down as that, I would reckon the expected customer base would have had issues getting in and out of the car.

Sent from my SM-A600FN using Tapatalk

Roverguest 24th December 2018 19:05

In terms of the engine, would it not of had a ROVER mems3 engine cover rather than an example with blank rectangle as well as a black coated cam cover rather than bare alloy?

Car looks superb, a real credit to all involved

Bolin 2nd January 2019 21:51

Good to see this project finished off, the end result looks great.

Orange wires in the interior lamp - Trikey is spot on about the phone, those wires and connector are for the microphone for the phone system, see the 'integrated telephone' in the earliest sales brochure and in the Technical Brochure, which almost made production but was pulled at the last moment. The connector actually has a receptacle in the lamp housing to 'park' when there is no microphone (as is the case with all these early cars), and the microphone was a standard BMW one, like that used later for the SmartNav, and clips in place to the back of the 'grills' in the lamp unit. The microphone wiring was fitted even up to mid-2001, and my car has it despite the cancellation of the telephone over 2 years earlier.

The white connector in the same area was for the front passenger occupancy sensor, which was scheduled for later in 1999 but was also cancelled at the last moment. I believe this would have automatically detected a passenger or child seat to turn the airbag on or off as appropriate. I think it would have 'seen' through the black part of the lamp unit lens, maybe using infra red? The connector is actually listed in the Electrical Library in 2003, although the wiring was only fitted to very early cars.

The roof joint trims - I think these should be completely plain without the bungs for the roof rack attachments, as fitted to other pre-production cars, but finding a plain set would be extremely difficult.

The driver's cupholder - originally this was to be standard on Connoisseur and Connoisseur SE models, and indeed the earliest sales brochures list it, but it was cancelled late on and no production cars had them as standard (they were available as an accessory). As this model is a Classic, I don't think it would have had a driver's cupholder, and that only Connoisseur's were to have it, so it probably never had one originally.

Front seats - these look to be speckle velour? Whereas a Classic should be plain, and the rear seat I think looks plain. Easy to correct if so.

And a good spot with the badge on the wheel trims, didn't know that!

Reebs 2nd January 2019 22:09

Excellent background knowledge about the telephone orange wires and the white connector too Bolin, the telephone wire connector plug was indeed sitting in the parked receptacle within the interior light housing.

The seats fitted to OVP are in fact Club seats with speckled velour both front and back. This was done by someone at Cowley or Longbridge, probably to enable the extra capability of folding rear seats which the original classic seats were not designed to do.

Mattyboy 27th January 2019 21:24

Birmingham NEC
 
I spent a great deal of time examining S392 DEH the Wedgewood Blue Connie at the NEC mainly because it had a Neptune Blue interior & briefly spoke to the owner.

I regret that I glanced only briefly at OVP & didn't appreciate it's full significance back in November, taking only two photos but now I've post humorously read this article I've found a new appreciation for her & I'm glad to say I've seen her in the steel.

The remarks about poverty spec cars rarely surviving as owners naturally tend to look after the top spec vechiles certainly rings true & will make her even more unique as the years pass by. She probably returns quite healthy mpg figures without gadgets ladening her down down.

https://ibb.co/VLgpGHM


All times are GMT. The time now is 13:26.

Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.11
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions Inc.
Copyright © 2006-2023, The Rover 75 & MG ZT Owners Club Ltd