I thought that registration sounded familiar, this car was going to be the first Rover 75 I bought, back in 2001!
It was up for sale at SMC Rover in Slough for £16,495 and had 29,831 on the clock. I paid a £500 deposit on it and was just waiting for them to sort out a gremlin with the highline tv function, and fix the cruise control which didn't work on the test drive.
Here is a picture I took of it at the dealers back then
As you can see, it's lost it's wooden wheel since then and also it's chrome mirror caps. Interestingly, it's also stamped and listed as a Connoisseur not a Connoisseur SE even though it had the spec of the SE, I guess at that point they hadn't finalised the final trim level names? The car was the 9th of 13 75s to leave the production line on 13th January 1999 and was the 481st Rover 75 built. It was first registered on 1st March 1999.
I've even still got the original order form dated 2nd May 2001.
The reason, I didn't go through with the sale was because the analogue tv would only display a picture if the engine wasn't running. So if you wanted to sit in a car park while waiting for the Mrs to come out of Sainsbury's you had to have the key in position II to make it work, as soon as you started the engine the picture would mute with the screen saying 'TV cannot be viewed while vehicle is in motion' which of course should only appear once the handbrake is off and the car exceeds 3 mph.
They couldn't resolve the issue, so instead offered me another slightly higher mileage JOP car which I ended up accepting. You'll see that Peter Slater the salesman who dealt with me, had it down as an auto, but it wasn't of course.
I never thought I'd see this original one again!