Quote:
Originally Posted by coolguy
I still own my late Father's SD1 V8S. It was 3 years old when he bought it in 1983, and was confined to storage in 1989 when he bought his last car, a 1986 Jaguar 4.2 Sovereign, which he said made the Rover feel like a tin can! Sentimentality means I still have it, but with a genuine 29,000 miles and totally original, it gets little use as I have a love/hate relationship with it. Style without substance!
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Interesting observation, that, about the SD1 being 'style without substance'. My father owned three of them, all 2600 models, in the 1970s and '80s while I was growing up.
As far as substance is concerned, I can't comment fully as I was too young to drive them and so never gained a proper impression of the cars' dynamics. However, my memory, as a passenger, of his 1978 car was that it rolled through corners almost as badly as the Renault 5 of the same era and that the doors 'clanged' rather than 'thunked' shut. His 1981 and 1985 models were much better in those two respects.
With regard to style, it was most gorgeous in series-one guise and before they started chipping away at David Bache's design by changing the door-mirrors and even putting that horizontal vent in above the front number plate, around 1981.
Out of interest, what colour is yours? The pin-up V8-S came in Triton Green but I remember them in other shades too.
P.S. Here's a link to a rather depressing but fascinating documentary, filmed in early 1980, about the dire state of BL at the time. There's a few seconds of footage (from around the 7min 50 sec mark) of SD1s being prepped as they near the end of the track at Solihull.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsizoYrceOg