Any Rover 3500 SD1 series 1 is a noteworthy sight. A left hooker, in France, with a Parisian registration and yellow headlights and in mid 1970s brown, is almost certainly close to unique.
Is it me, or it saying “Liberez-moi s’il vous plaît!”
CC Outtake: 1977 Rover 3500 SD1 Series 1 – Calling To Me To Say “Release Me!”
– Posted on April 12, 2016
Shouldn’t it be saying, “Don’t you want me baby?”
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uPudE8nDog0
Good to know that I’m not the only one that instantly correlates that song and the Rover SD1. Everytime I hear that song I think Rover SD1, and vice versa. And I hadn’t even seen that video in probably over 25 years.
I confess to having forgotten that……I’m not sure it’s aged as well as the Rover
I especially remember this one:
GOOD CALL!!!! Great song & car.
Ha! Brilliant Brendan! The video was good, the song was great and the SD1 was superb! I am a genuine SD1 fan, but even so I assume they filmed the video in a brief moment when the Rover was actually functioning… 😉
Familiar sight, familiar thoughts, But in my case… no, thanks !
http://photo.qip.ru/users/dl24/96663146/
P.S.: another car on these photos is a prewar Mercedes-Benz 190, there were also two Daimler V12’s in this garage.
Oh those Russian winters!.Pre dates 1991 so must be a import yes?.
Yellow headlights on French vehicles date back to the pre-WW2 years.
Introduced so that the local troops could see the difference between their own population and the enemy. At the beginning of, and during the war, the Germans said “Vielen Dank”, as they could easily recognize French vehicles from a far distance; just another perfect shooting target…
Yellow headlights were used until 1994, cars built after that year don’t have them anymore.
Urban mith was that the French government introduced yellow head lamps so if the saw a vehicle with white ones it was invading Germans but in reality Paris decided that yellow lights dazzled less than white ones. NIce story …
For all the iffy quality of the time, I have a great fondness for these. Ultramodern inside and out. A versatile hatchback. An austere police car or a wood and leather vanden plas. A gas or diesel four, a lightweight FI V8, or an OHC variant of the Triumph inline 6. A five speed or GM auto. It really had so much more to offer than the international replacements.
Nice as a V8. The fours were cheapskate, and the inline 6 was trouble.
This may look abandoned, but to the French it’s just resting.
First time I ever went abroad was in 1988, aged 7. On a double decker bus from Edinburgh to Port Camargue in the south of France.
One of my clearest memories of Port Camargue is waiting to cross the road at a zebra crossing, and an SD1 passing by, which I didn’t expect in France. It ran over a lizard (something I’d never seen before) and I watched the severed tail writhe around the crossing on its own.
That is all.
Random. Hehehe
Aside from maybe seeing 1 at British car shows, the only SD1 I’ve ever seen on the road was at the (former) Navy Air Base, now NASA research facility, in Mountain View, California. That was in the early 80s. I’ve seen more Triumph Stags over the years, than I’ve seen SD1s.
My uncle bought one after getting rid of his Delta 88 (which he bought in response to second gas crisis) in the early eighties. Pre-internet he was always waiting for his mechanic to get a part, so I don’t even remember this car. He said it was comfortable, had a good stereo and the cabin had great acoustics.
Great find Roger – I’ve always wanted an SD1 and I’ll be in Paris next month, wonder if I can sneak the car into my carry-on bag for the trip home…mind you there are enough SD1s left here in New Zealand that it wouldn’t be worth it, although those yellow headlights are soooo Euro-cool…
The SD1 was not designed to be a Rover,it was to be a new and relatively large British Leyland sedan.BL was in dire economic straits and foisted that car on Rover.The previous Rover P6 was an advanced piece of engineering.The SD1 was not.It had many problems and was a retrograde step for a once fine firm,Rover.Great shape and Buick V8,but seriously faulty and a compromise.
The SD1 was not designed to be a Rover,it was to be a new and relatively large British Leyland sedan.BL was in dire economic straits and foisted that car on Rover.
That’s a novel take on the SD1’s origins. Actually, the initial thinking was that one new car/platform could possibly be used to both replace the Triumph 200/2500 and the Rover P6. But the Rover was always part of that, as the P6 was getting very geriatric. Here’s the correct story from David Saunder’s CC:
Since British Leyland intended to replace both the P6 and the Triumph 2000/2500 saloons With its intended successor, styling proposals were accepted from both Rover and Triumph. The Triumph team’s effort was code-named Puma, and featured Michelotti styling; the Rover proposal, named P10, aimed to once again leapfrog the competition with an unusual and large hatchback design.
The Rover team, which was headed by David Bache, edged out Triumph, and British Leyland went with the more daring and exotic styling direction. It was initially renamed RT1 to indicate both Rover and Triumph influences; however, the corporate masters decided Triumph should focus on smaller cars, and the project was renamed SD1 (Specialist Division Number 1) as a Rover exclusive.
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/curbside-classics-european/storage-yard-classic-rover-3500-se-sd1-rovers-exit-strategy/
The idea of replacing the P6 and 2000/2500 with a single car, it should be said, was something that would almost certainly have happened even if British Leyland had never come to pass. When Leyland/Standard-Triumph bought Rover and Alvis, the P6 and 2000 were the only direct overlap in the Rover and Triumph lineups, so they would certainly have been consolidated eventually, although at that point it wasn’t Leyland’s first priority.
i like the P8 concepts which predate it:
http://www.aronline.co.uk/blogs/concepts/concepts-and-prototypes/concepts-rover-p8-gallery/
The P8 styling looks like the Austin/Morris Marina “slightly” upsized with Mitsubishi Colt influences in the details.
The swappable “instrument box” concept must have been a part of all the concepts.
I have several books that outline Triumph’s history, yet none mention a sedan that was considered as an “offshoot” of the large Rover sedan program….very interesting.
Rovers of any model have yet to become rare here though LHD with yellow lights is definitely up there,theres a 6 cylinder SD1 I pass quite often parked roadside I must shoot it for the cohort before it crumbles away.
Uncle Will, Mum’s younger brother had a nightmare new SD1 in 1976. It was his last Rover, he drove BMWs after this lemon.
Roderick Lohrey –
I think you are wrong about the SD1 being developed as a Leyland branded car rather than a Rover. It is true that with both Triumph and Rover being under the BL umbrella by that time there would be just one model to replace the Rover P6 and Triumph 2000/2500 – but as far as I know the SD1 was only ever considered a Rover model.
good write-up of the full development history here:
http://www.aronline.co.uk/blogs/cars/rover/sd1-rover/the-cars-rover-sd1-development-history/
I remember the SD1 well from growing up in England. I guess they are (yet another) British car model that potentially had so much going for them at launch but were totally undermined by poor build quality and reliability issues, poor paint and electrical gremlins. An uncle of mine who had a pretty good executive job was entitled to a company car in the SD1 class. I remember him saying that some of his peers had opted for the Rovers…. they loved the cars and loved driving them, but sadly they “spent nearly as much time in the workshop as they did on the road”. Ominously, my uncle ended up having exclusively BMWs as his company cars….
Shame really. They were nice driving and handling cars. Strictly speaking, the rear suspension being a live axle was a step back compared to either the P6 DeDion set-up or Triumph 2000/2500 IRS, but in practice they made it work very well. The V-8 models were fast (for their day) particularly the Vitesse (and esp. the rare twin plenum variants). The Triumph-derived straight sixes were afflicted with reliability issues, which again is a great shame, as from what I’ve heard the larger 2600 six was a nice engine to drive.
There were few real equivalents at the time, a fast, good driving, comfortable 5-door car for a reasonable price? and although styling is subjective, I think they were pretty handsome, with that nose borrowed from the Ferrari Daytona!
As a “classic car” they have been going through that cycle than many models do – that cheap, unwanted, multiple uncaring owners, stage – for a while…. I can’t help thinking that one day when most of them have rotted away, been scrapped, parted out and few are left, they will become something of a sought after classic, especially in V-8 form. I understand that in the UK, good, unmolested examples of the “Vitesse twin plenum” cars are already becoming quite sought after?
Any SD1 will get a good welcome at a Classic Rally, maybe more than an XJ6 or XJ-S.
A very rare sight on the roads now. many have been broken for the engines, rear axles or for banger racing 🙁
Oh, how I love the SD1! Such a crisp, modern design, inside and out… A refreshing change from the popular British tradition of employing an abundance of heritage design cues.
+1 – these are absolutely gorgeous. Unfulfilled potential on wheels.
(Great find, Roger.)
My 89 year old neighbour lady has a 1984 SD1 3500 Vandenplas parked in the garage.
Complete with sunroof, automatic gearbox and Philips car stereo
It is a one owner car,her late husband bought it new and it has 84000 kilometers on the clock.
I used to take it out for a spin but now the transmission has a large oil leak so it has been stationary in her heated garage for well over a year now !
It was sold in India in the mid-1980s as the Standard 2000.
http://www.roversd1cars.talktalk.net/HTML%20Files/India.html
They sold about all of about 1300 of these in the USA, although I did see a few of them in the wild back in the day, and finally got a chance to sit in one at a British car show a few years ago. The car had to be extensively revised to meet US regulations, including different front fenders.