Ye Olde Auntie Rover! Now that’s a British institution on wheels if I’ve ever seen one. Didn’t expect to find it in Tokyo, but they’re such Anglophiles here that anything is possible, even bumping into a P4. But which kind of Auntie would this be? They have all manner of numbers after their Rover surname to indicate what engine they have – or rather, how powerful said engine is. Looking at the badge we have… *record scratch* a Rover Sixty? As in 60hp?
For reasons that we’ll get to presently, the 60 is a rather uncommon variant of the breed. Also pretty slow. At least they’re easier to catch if and when you do find one. But no matter what engine it has, it’s a P4 – the car that defined Rover for a generation, probably one of the most advanced British cars of its day. The only trouble was its day turned into many, many years.
I won’t reinvent the wheel or retell the Rover saga that Roger Carr has expertly regaled us with in his seminal post on the P4. But just to add a dab of historical context, let’s quickly remind ourselves of the origins of the Rover P4. Until it came out in late 1949, Rover cars had been quite conservative, especially in terms of appearance. This ended with the P4, with which the old Solihull firm showed that it heeded the winds of change that blew in from the States. More specifically, from South Bend. And with that third headlight, maybe a little from wherever Preston Tucker was by that time, too.
The original design was a bit overwhelming though, so Rover did tone it down over time. The cyclops headlight disappeared by MY 1953, the tail was redesigned to look plumper (one might say Auntiesque), a three-piece wraparound backlight was added and the column change went back to the floor. The initial car’s 75hp 2.1 litre 6-cyl. found itself buttressed by a 60hp 4-cyl. on one side and a 90hp 2.6 litre six on the other. All Rover engines at the time featured an inlet over exhaust (IoE) or F-head.
And thus the good ship Rover stayed afloat throughout the ‘50s and into the next decade, with Auntie at the helm. There were other variants – a 105, an 80, a 95 and even a 110 – but they were all of the same family. And as the ‘50s wore on, Auntie’s once fashionable styling started to look frumpy.
But after the turn signals migrated to the top of the wings in 1957, the P4’s appearance was no longer high on its maker’s priority list. By that point, it was so out of date that nothing but a complete replacement (a.k.a the P6) would do. Yet it carried on regardless right through to 1964. A legend in its own time.
However, what most people recall fondly are the 6-cyl. cars. Nobody ever thought the 4-cyl. cars were that interesting. Our little 60 here was given the same 2-litre engine that was used in Land Rovers. The problem was that it’s one thing to have that kind of engine in a two-door 4×4 on a mountain pass, but quite another to put it into a relatively heavy four-door saloon trying to overtake a truck.
For although this car shares its engine with the Land Rover and came from the same factory, the P4 is pretty far from a rugged cross-country all-wheeler. Rover’s conservative bona fides were a tad upset by the original P4, but they came back with a vengeance after a while.
We’re talking leather on the seats and the doors, wood on the dash and the window frames, a beautiful bakelite and chrome steering wheel that must itself weigh a fair amount… There’s a lot of car for 60hp to haul.
In 1959, Rover replaced the 2-litre with a 2.3 litre that provided 77hp, because every little helps. And it did, apparently: Rover sold about 9200 of the 2-litre model from 1953 to 1959 and 5600 of the 2.3 litre model between 1960 and 1962.
So what we have here is a rather unpopular Auntie. The crazy one with the cats and the mouldy fridge, not the cool one with the nice TV set and the herbal refreshments. They may be sisters, but they’re quite different. The big problem was that both lived rather near to each other, price-wise. Yes, we’re going to investigate that in the usual manner – a big old comparison table, but with two P4s.
Prices fluctuated a lot in 1955-57 – probably because British carmakers were so busy coming out with 2-litre-plus saloons. I mean, this table doesn’t even include Ford and Vauxhall, as those were too cheap to make the cut, nor AC and Bristol for the opposite reason, plus it could have also featured dangerous foreign rivals such as the Fiat 1900, the Renault Frégate, the Borgward Isabella or the new Citroën DS. But look at the poor Rover 60, stuck there at 75mph (going downhill) – why would you even consider it? Especially when an extra £50 would get you the 90…
How about nowadays? Sixty-five years of hard labour will have taken its toll on the old gal, so the initial 60 might be closer to 50 or even 40hp by now. Not enough to make that Viking’s winged helmet fly off, that’s for sure.
This is one laaaaaazy Auntie, pulling away to seek pastures new. But still a proud P4, with impeccable leather upholstery and a longship on its prow. May God bless her and all who sail in her, as they say.
Rover did learn from the relative fiasco of the 60. When the P6 was launched in 1963, the base model had a brand new 100hp 2-litre OHC 4-cyl. – far more fitting for the kind of car Rover buyers aspired to. Slow and steady might win the race in fables, but in the cut-throat 2-litre saloon market of the never-had-it-so-good Britain of the late ‘50s, there was such a thing as too much moderation.
Related post:
Curbside Classic: 1963 Rover 95 (P4) – How One Car Defined A Brand, by Roger Carr
I’m old enough to remember when you could buy one for a tenner [ two weeks wages for me in those far-off days].
That one’s about as well presented as possible with an excellent color combination and the front end badging/logo/grille is magnificent. As one who doesn’t particularly care for the 1950s (and as such have no particular preconceptions or biases) I like it; remove the badging on all the cars in the table and it kind of fits right in (like CUVs today to some?) with the exception of perhaps the Jaguar. Sure, it’d be “better” in 75 or 90 format but I suspect that road tax was perhaps a consideration at the time as well rather than just the extra 50 (or 57 rather) quid. If you’re not on the motorway between London and The North the top speed is rather academic, for pottering to the shops this’d get you there without having to doff your hat just as well. And probably still quicker than the Landie assuming both stuck to actual roads.
The road tax was replaced with a flat rate of £10 a year from January 1948, £12 10s from 1953.
My understanding is that the rationale for the 60 was to bring the price of entry down, since the purchase tax when it was first introduced was extremely high (up to 66.66 percent on cars over £1,000 basic). The basic price difference between the 60 and the 90 in 1953 was £95 (about $266 USD), plus the tax, which I think was almost 42 percent in that bracket, making for a difference of more like £135 ($378 USD), a pretty big jump in those days. However, the 60 still cost a big pile of money by ’50s British standards, and so getting a four instead of the smooth six didn’t seem like a great deal.
From a road tax standpoint, the 2-liter car probably makes more sense in Japan now than it did in the UK when new.
Maybe they should have considered decontenting the interior along with, or instead of, the smaller engine.
The way the rear axle is set back further than usual reminds me a bit of the 1986 Seville. It doesn’t enhance its proportions any, but undoubtedly was done to eliminate intrusion into the rear seat area by the wheel wells. Typical advanced Rover thinking.
I think one reason the British prices fluctuated so much in the ’50s was that the purchase tax kept shifting, ranging from “quite high” to “gorblimey,” depending.
A spot of online research says the 60’s unladen weight was 3073 lb, for 51.2 lb/hp. That’s more or less Mercedes W123 240D territory. Not the car I’d want for merging onto the Arroyo Seco Parkway, formerly the Pasadena Freeway, in Los Angeles.
THE AUTOCAR road test of 20 August 1954 gives a curb weight of 3,034 lb with five Imperial gallons of fuel, so yeah, that works out to about 3,070 with a full tank. They got 0 to 60 in 23.2 seconds, the standing quarter mile in 23.1 seconds, a mean two-way top speed of 77.25 mph, and 24 miles to the U.S. gallon. Not terrible for a British sedan of the time, roughly halfway between a Ford Consul four and Ford Zephyr six.
It was enough to putter out to the pub and back, in those pre-motorway days.
Or indeed the breathalyser…
More likely the golf club for a Rover driver Is uspect
Awesome cars! I remember my grandparents’ neighbour had a ‘Cyclops eye’ 75 when I was a wee lad. I was fascinated by the extra light. Much nicer interior than Dad’s Morris Oxford.
Speaking of things BMC, it’s sobering to think that the Morris, Austin and Wolseley/Riley in your comparison table here represented three different platforms of much the same size; a stretched Oxford, a stretched and widened Cambridge (with coil front end, not torsion bars BTW), and a separate body-on-chassis setup for the two prestige entries. And this in a class that weren’t major sellers.
great catch on that Austin, Pete — will amend the table as soon as.
Cheers!
The standard P6 Rover 2000, whiile livlier than the P4 60 was no fireball either.
It was a good cruiser but took a while to get there, which is why the 2000 TC (twin carb) was launched IIRC in 1966 for MY67 and eventually, the ex-Buicl aluminium V8 was shoehorned in to give the 3500. The same motor was also used in the P5 to give the 3.5 Litre Saloon and Coupe models, the former being particularly loved by ministers and the Queen.
And the six-cylinder Triumph 2000 had more of the “in no great hurry, but smooth and relaxed” vibe than the P6.